China Quietly Inks Billion Dollar Oil Deal With Iraq

The coronavirus pandemic continues to wreak havoc not just on physical but economic health across the world.  Yet for one country this has actually been a golden opportunity. Suspiciously so in fact. It is becoming increasingly clear that the advent of this global catastrophe is yielding positive outcomes for the very country that unleashed it in the first place: Communist China.

A while back on these pages I brought the readers’ attention to China’s maneuvers designed to address perhaps its most glaring Achilles’ heel in its drive to make the 21^st Century the Chinese century.  That is its lack of energy independence. Unlike its rival/enemy (as they see us at any rate) the United States, China is very much dependent on foreign sources of oil and natural gas to power its growing economy. It is, in fact, the world’s largest importer of fossil fuels, at roughly 10.04 million barrels per day; its energy usage due to its 1.4 billion population accounts for 25% of global energy consumption.