China = clicks nowadays I guess?

The US produces more oil products than anyone else by a large margin [1] and extracts more than anyone else [2].

[1] https://www.eia.gov/tools/faqs/faq.php?id=709&t=6 [2] https://tradingeconomics.com/country-list/crude-oil-producti...

> This ability to turn oil demand on and off, ostensibly at low economic cost, allows the world’s biggest oil importer to move prices just as the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (opec) and its allies have long done through their control of half of global output.

This is not about production. You should read the article and not only the title.

China had the foresight to fill its petroleum reserves when prices were lower( so much so they raised prices just by that action) and can keep going for four more months with very little impact from the USA/Iran/Israel war. They simply raised gas prices to get consumers to stop driving ICE so much and moved its internal petrochemical industry (largest in world according to article) to replace Middle East imports and stop exporting (causing the mini crisis in neighbors who imported from China). The standoff situation in Middle East has to continue for four consecutive months before we see China having to take other measures.

Yes, the US still outproduces China in oil by nearly a factor of three. The actual meaning of the vague title is that China temporarily buffered world crude prices.

TFA notes that China controlled prices during the Iran/"Orange Idiot" war in three ways: (1) they had fortunately filled their storage during a recent price drop, (2) they restricted exports of China oil, and (3) domestic use "sharply" decreased.

The article concludes that this 3-pronged approach is "manageable", but not sustainable:

> But the Iran war has shown that, in practice, China can singlehandedly stabilise the global oil market over a period of many months. Leaders of the increasingly fractious oil cartel can only dream of doing the same. ■