Amin Nasser, the head of Saudi Aramco, the world’s largest oil company, has always had one special customer: China. In his 10 years in charge, Nasser has seen the value of Saudi oil exports to China more than triple, to a record $US56 billion ($90 billion) in 2022, a year in which almost one in six barrels that Saudi Arabia pumped was shipped to Chinese refineries.
Foreign oil has underpinned China’s economic rise, as the country built the world’s largest car industry from scratch, new railways and air travel networks, and thousands of skyscrapers. In 2022, 72 per cent of its total crude oil supply was imported, according to the International Energy Agency (IEA).
