Michal Meidan

Thanks, James, and thanks, Alice.

I love listening to your podcast, so I'm really pleased to be joining you today.

You're right, it is a fast-moving picture, and hopefully by the time this is published, we haven't been sort of overcome by events.

But I think the fundamentals are still the same, right?

In terms of oil flows, it's insignificant.

I mean, this is a geopolitically massive event.

If you look at the oil market and price movements, it has had very, very little impact.

Anecdotally, if you look at official customs data, China doesn't import any Venezuelan oil.

But if you look at tanker tracking and other data, it's around 4% of China's total imports and quite easily substitutable.

Financially, it's a slightly different story because, as you alluded to, the oil is a repayment for some of the debt that

or a lot of the debt that China has given Venezuela over the years.

The other element here is that roughly two thirds of that oil is bought by independent refiners.

These are sometimes called the Shandong teapots.

They thrive on sanctioned and discounted oil.

So it helps their margins.

It supports the local economy in Shandong.

where they are overwhelmingly located.

They also like the fact that a lot of the debt is now repaid and a lot of the trade happens in renminbi.

So that's an advantage for them.

But none of this is sort of dramatic or devastating if the flows stop.