China’s Middle East journey via Jerusalem

Saudi Arabia’s credentials for helping China fulfill its target are far more credible than Iran’s. Apart from supplying 17% of China’s total oil imports currently and making multi-billion-dollar investments in China’s petrochemical sector, Saudi Arabia, as a “swing producer”, has unique capability to produce oil significantly above its Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries quota. The expert estimation is that if Saudi Arabia chose to produce for the next three-year period an extra half-million barrels of oil a day for Beijing, that alone would bring China’s strategic oil reserve to three months’ supply. That is why China has offered extraordinary privileges to Saudi Arabia in the collaboration over the setting-up of the strategic oil reserve.

Translated to the geopolitical plane, simply put, China has to be sensitive about the Saudi stance toward Iran.
Asia Times