China seeks military dominance through fossil fuels

China seeks military dominance through fossil fuels

 

 

By Ronald Stein

 

As the world watches, China has been aggressively building its fleet of ships and aircraft in anticipation of a potential attack on Taiwan.

 

To support that military domination, China is also aggressively building its fossil fuel refining capabilities to power those ships and aircraft. Meanwhile, President Joe Biden is aggressively campaigning to rid America of fossil fuels, inclusive of in-America oil production and oil refining!

 

For all Americans, the 42-minute CBS 60 Minutes presentation video is a must viewing of The state of the U.S. Navy as China builds up its naval force and threatens Taiwan. CBS also provided a transcript of the July 2nd presentation for reading at your leisure.

 

Probably due to time constraints for the excellent 60 Minutes broadcast was CBS’s lack of coverage of China’s expansion of its refining capabilities to manufacture OPEC and Russian oil into the fuels needed by China’s growing fleet of ships and aircraft.

 

Asia is the region with the greatest number of future petroleum refineries. The amount of oil fed through refineries in Asia has significantly increased in the past three decades as demand for manufactured fuels and petroleum products surged in developing countries such as China and India, with significantly less stringent environmental regulations than those in America. As reported by Reuters, China’s oil refining capacity overtook the United States as the world’s largest in 2022.

 

Unbeknownst to President Joe Biden is that China’s Xi Jinping and Russia’s Vladimir Putin are great War historians. As World War I and II historians, Russia, China, and OPEC know, the country that controls the minerals, crude oil, and natural gas, controls the world!

 

Biden has a short memory of petrochemical products and human ingenuity being the reasons for the world populating from 1 to 8 billion in less than two hundred years. Ridding America of oil before identifying a replacement is immoral and evil, as extreme shortages of the products and fuels now manufactured from fossil fuels will result in billions of fatalities from diseases, malnutrition, and weather-related deaths and will have overwhelmingly negative impacts on GDP, national security, and development.

 

With China pursuing military domination, President Joe Biden continues moving to rid America of fossil fuels while simultaneously pursuing the generation of occasional electricity from wind turbines and solar panels. Thus, Biden is doing an excellent job of actively relinquishing “CONTROL” of the crude oil supply to OPEC and Russia and refining capacity to China!

 

In January 2019, there were 135 operating refineries in America. As of January 1, 2023, there were 129 operable petroleum refineries in the United States. The recent closures have resulted in the United States losing nearly 1 million barrels per day of oil refining capacity, with more set to be shuttered in the next few years.

 

The future does not bode well as 20 percent of the 700 worldwide aging refineries are projected to close in the next five years, which will result in less manufacturing with the loss of 140 sites to meet the ever-growing demands of ships, aircraft, and the derivatives needed for all the products demanded by society. With less manufacturing in wealthy countries in the days ahead, further shortages and inflation of both fuels and products in perpetuity are guaranteed.

 

In the years ahead, as Biden focuses on ridding the USA of fossil fuels, America’s powerful and elite military fleet of ships and aircraft will become more dependent on the fuels and oil-based products manufactured in China’s refineries!

 

Author
Ronald Stein
Ronald Stein is an engineer, senior policy advisor on energy literacy for CFACT, and co-author of the Pulitzer Prize nominated book “Clean Energy Exploitations.”

From cfact.org

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