Did Chris “Show-Me-the-Data-Baby” Martenson just say that basically China controls the price of Oil?
Holy Shitballs!
By the way, has Chris “Show-Me-the-Data-Baby” Martenson announced his next Honey-Badger Ho Down in New Hampshire in September?
Is it the case now that whichever country has the largest Strategic Petroleum Reserve (spoiler alert: It’s China) basically controls the Price of Oil? Is this also the case for other Commodities, like Copper, Silver, Lithium, Cow Farts, etc.?
I became aware of Nate Hagens a long time ago, at a site called The Oil Drum which endlessly debated when/if peak oil production would arrive. He and Gail Tvberg were the most interesting contributors there. His current podcast really highlights the development of his thinking: from “when will we be past peak oil” to “what shall we do in response to diminishing energy supplies”. He has great guest interviews.
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They’re economically illiterate (and/or evil) enough to try it. We all know how price controls end up. Diocletian tried it, the Bolsheviks tried it, Nixon tried it. You can see a fair price clearly displayed but still couldn’t buy a thing for less than the price of a kidney cause there’s nothing to buy 
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I don’t think it takes a conspiracy to have anticipated an oil-based crisis coming over the horizon. After all, Chris has been warning us since about 2008, and has issued updated analyses all along the way. He also warned us last year to make preparations, and looks for opportunities to invest where profits will be made from a crashing oil supply and the breaking of the global integration of the economy. I can readily imagine China has experts with the same ability to see what our Information Scout has been reporting.
I think China has been preparing for at least a decade for a coming time when the US would seek to destroy China’s economy. After all, Western leaders, US at the forefront, have been broadcasting just that very loudly. Of course stockpiling oil - along with other base resources (including rare earths), and diversifying energy generation sources, and building out an alternative distribution network - and now an alternative international trade settlement system - would be a part of plans to remove oneself from the excessive reach of the US. It all takes time, and China has obviously been putting time to good use, preparing itself to weather the kinds of attacks it has seen the US use against small countries all over the world.
It’s not unlike me preparing for economic chaos for the last decade. And preparing, as well, for the boot of government pressed on domestic necks that I think always comes at the end of Empire, when a nation’s rulers find they can no longer put the boot to outsiders. That’s when, needing to exercise power over others to feel purpose in life, they turn on those inside their borders.
That’s where we are, and it’s wise to prepare accordingly. Those who don’t prepare will suffer more harshly. And they will blame others for their suffering, insisting no one could have seen it coming, except those in on the conspiracy. Like us preppers.
We Americans - First World Westerners in general - don’t take the long view, and so don’t strategically plan. Heck, we’re hardly tactical. Trump is megaphoning in real time that in the West we just make it up day to day, based mostly on how we’re feeling before breakfast. We do that on the individual level, and all the way up through city, county, and state governments to the national level. That’s exactly why our infrastructure is falling apart, our money is crumbling, and our leaders get worse with every election regardless of what party’s in power.
So when we see a country that does think and act strategically - that in fact has a history of making 5, 20, and 50 year plans, and then following up those strategic plans with annual goals to meet them, goals for the meeting of which leaders are actually selected for their subject matter expertise and are held accountable - we think they must be cheating or manipulating, or somehow otherwise conniving to break us for their own advantage.
I see a country that acts rationally in its own interest - and, therefore, in a way that advances the wellbeing of its own citizens, and its trading partners, too - vs. the entire West that behaves emotionally, hence erratically to its own detriment and to the harm of its erstwhile partners, and that then blames others when the result is something less than worth remarking on. For if it’s not a conspiracy against us, what’s left to explain our emergent collapse?
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Many years ago (around 2010) I was teaching English to immigrants in the US, many of whom were Vietnamese. To practice conditional verbs, one day, we discussed what we’d do in case our house was on fire.
To a person, the Vietnamese (older, mostly over 50) said some version of “Get the cash and gold out of my house.” Keeping cash and gold at home struck me as odd at the time. It would be a few years before the lightbulb went on. Oh. They’d been through some shit and seen systems fail, so they always had a backup.
People in Western countries haven’t been through any real shit in living memory and don’t know what it looks like when systems fail, so planning for the future seems like a waste of time. I anticipate we’ll be reminded why that belief structure is foolish.
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VT
Can you give us the source of this info, please?
Your experience with the Vietnamese immigrants seems to suggest that those who had the knowledge and ability to hide gold and money at home also had the knowledge and abilities to emigrate when the time was right.
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Sure.
China anticipates oil shortage (and prepares)
China’s planned short, medium, and long term responses to oil and energy crisis.
China’s contribution to keeping oil prices below $100
China’s longterm planning for energy crises
“Building a Strong Energy Nation” is part of China’s 15-year plan
China’s longterm energy diversification program vindicated
China’s SPR in relation to potential conflict with the West
There are many more articles like these from a range of sources. Likely your search engine’s AI could pull up a list if you want more.
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Thanks. I am so bereft of oil knowledge. I still need to understand what Art’s been tweeting vs Chris and crap tons if others wrt how this shut down of such a large percentage of oil and petroleum products versus futures prices makes any sense. Art uses charts and data to explain why oil’s really pricing correctly while Chris uses charts to demonstrate why it’s not.
I am glad that it hasn’t become a food fight on X. Everyone’s back and forth seems reasonable. I just wish I could follow along enough to know who is correct and what’s missing.
In ‘73, a teensy tiny amount of oil compared to today was embargoed over a five month period and oil/gas prices went stratospheric. Why aren’t they doing that now?Were futures prices back then doing the same thing as now? Before Feb 28, was there actually way more oil than the world needed?
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Simply put, my comment is made through the lens of world powers jockeying for position over any cutrural based ideologys of short term vs long term planning. I’m still comfortable holding the view that the power players in China were in the know of plans to disrupt the middle east and they planned adequetly for it.
I reject the notion that westerners are short sighted and the east play the long game.
To me thats as reductionist as saying white men are toxic and women are victims.
There are multiple multigenerational companys and families across the world thinking long term in their actions - they’re just not as visible as china’s publications available ‘long term plans’. Its a pretty neat feature of longer term governments to actually stick to a vision, but also when you have tighter control over your population, its also easier to just make things happen. Meanwhile the ‘west’ are wrapped up in red tape and half backed visions- that is not the same as a population being shortsighted.. its just a ‘feature’ of the political system that’s been set up.
That’s just in the power influence sphere, when it comes to permaculture and regenative agriculture, again that’s a world wide phenomena, looking long term to improve soil and quality. Nothing to do with east vs west ideology.
Then there’s homeschooling, decentralised medicine, holding assets and commodities.. most individuals who are aware of the threats of the world around them and are willing to act, will do so to protect their longevity and wealth.
Heck, what American with a gun licence isn’t prepared with a few thousand rounds extra than they need for their next hunting or range weekend?
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Okay. Comfort’s important, I guess.
And maybe they did have information telling them there would be a disruption of Middle Eastern oil in 2026. All I’m saying is there doesn’t have to be a conspiracy. Just paying attention to trends and trajectories - the kind of thing Luke Gromen excels at (and at which Chris ain’t bad neither) - yields the same expectation.
Chris saw it coming. I don’t think he’s part of the conspiracy, nor do I think he’s getting his information from people who are. I could see it coming, too, and I know I don’t have any connections into the Davos crowd.
Being part of a conspiracy is not essential to seeing what’s coming. And how much one trusts one’s own insights - or the insights of a trusted other like Chris - is what determines whether one takes steps in advance to mitigate the effects one expects are coming.
I think all China had to do was pay attention and take steps, because Peak Oil has been on the radar since the surface deposits dried up and the cost of retrieving oil started to multiply, and Western antipathy to China’s development has been evident since before the turn of this century. Arguably, the West has been trying to keep China on its knees since the Opium Wars - which China does argue. So of course they have been building to protect against both.
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Thanks for reminding us.
We would not want to do anything to discourage or sidetrack Chris, or we would be taking time away that he could have used for sleep, family, farm, spiritual life, health, prepping, research, communications, neighbors, planning, and such.
Thank you Chris and team.
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What do you do with the information that chinese spokesman have stayed quiet on the impacts of oil disruption, that Xi and Trump have improved relationships between their countries and the latest PP suggestion that Gold maybe used to pay off china’s easing of oil imports.
I dont call any of that Conspiracy, I call that power dynamics and negotiation.
While I agree with you not everything is a conspiracy (a word pushed into the hive mind to discredit dot connecting and asking questions), but everything at the level of nation states at war is power plays and negotiation between power players.
Have you considered that covid, wuhan, mandates and reporting was pretty similar across many nations in the East n West? Might be labelled a conspiracy for you, but to me it looks pre-negotiated by key players.
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Thanks, VT. These links/sources get me going in the right direction
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I’m wondering if both you and @vtgothic couldn’t be right simultaneously. Most basic reason to claim China is shortsighted lives in my house. Our daughter was adopted from there. The result of the cruelty of the one child policy has and is still having negative consequences for China. Only a bunch of male engineers could have come up with that idea. For all the crowing about how the government is run by the brilliant brainiacs, they should have consulted some women peasants.
Yet it’s hard to escape the obvious when looking at our society that there’s a handful of connected groups that get what they want. But the vast majority gets played.
Best example I can offer is migration vs. immigration. A careful process of bringing people into your country is a good move that most people can understand. Especially when done in a way that allows time for them to integrate so society bends rather than breaks.
Migration imports wholly unsuitable people along those who could become good citizens given the right conditions. That ends up with rape gangs and public beheadings.
One group gets money importing these people, another group gets money rounding them up, incarcerating them and deporting them. Cha-ching!
That being said, I think China fears its people more than the West. Their people have had an overall increase in their standard of living but it’s hard to find a trend in the U.S. showing how the next generations are doing the same. Simple greed and corruption can explain that without any grand conspiracy.
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Most of them were brand new to the country and quite literally missed the boat. One guy was in the South Vietnamese army and had to burn all his documents when Saigon fell. He escaped the city and walked all the way across Cambodia during the Khmer Rouge times. Didn’t know how many men he’d killed — he said if someone shot at him he’d shoot back until the other shooting stopped. I didn’t think to ask him which guns he used. Anything he could get his hands on, I reckon. He made it to a refugee camp in Thailand and lived there for a long time before moving to the US.
He was hilarious, light-hearted, and very much did not seem to be a PTSD case. Interesting dude.
Important edit here: The country has been at peace for ~50 years now and the economy is booming. Been here 13 years and I’ve never seen a place change so fast. Other countries should take note.
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We have links to Vietnam. My mother-in-law lived in Saigon during the war and ran a nursing school for the 7th Day Adventist Church. Many of her former nursing students emigrated to the U.S. and she’s kept in touch with that community. The nursing skills the program gave them were portable to many different times and locations. So when people here give the advice to learn skills, they have no idea just how valuable something like that can be.
We’ve also spent time in Vietnam. We adopted our son in Danang in Jan. 2008. And when we returned for an extended visit about 10 years later I was stunned at how much the country has changed. So you picked up about where we left off. Even back then I though that I could happily live there. Except my husband seems to get some nasty skin fungal issues every time we go. Don’t think the climate agrees with him and I kind of want to keep him around. 
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Wow! I was living in Danang when you visited last. I wonder if we crossed paths. I’m in Hoi An now, so not far. Danang looks very different now than when you were there. The place is an absolute boomtown. Never seen anywhere change so fast. The fungal problems can be quite real — my son had a yeast infection on his arm, which I’d never heard of before, and I got a fungal infection in my ear from a poorly maintained swimming pool. Spookiest infection I ever had was a fungal infection in my foot after cutting it on a slimy rock in a cave in Thailand. Took ages to go away.
Besides all that, though, things are lovely here
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Puriya Wonder Balm. It was the only thing that finally worked. We keep a supply in our preps for anything fungal and irritation. I have no affiliation with them.
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