China and Russia: what crude oil import figures reveal about civilian fuel continuity
China and Russia, 2024 crude oil trade reported by the U.S. Energy Information Administration
What happened?
The U.S. Energy Information Administration reported that China imported an average of 11.1 million barrels of crude oil per day in 2024. About 2.2 million barrels per day came from Russia, roughly one-fifth of the total. These are national crude oil trade figures. The quantities at individual refineries and finished diesel stocks are separate measures.
How could the hypotheses work together?
- Information Integrity. Check whether records describe crude oil, finished diesel or another product, and distinguish historical statistics from current confirmed supply.
- Supply Chain Resilience. Use verified, legally eligible finished-fuel receipts and actual dispatch constraints when estimating civilian coverage.
- Sovereign Autonomy. Test whether essential civilian operators can reconcile their own records and act locally when a shared channel is unavailable.
What outcome could we estimate?
Use the historical data to illustrate supplier concentration. In a separate fictional exercise, test whether approved report sharing helps a receiving operator distinguish a delay from a product mismatch before projecting a local shortage. Compare a shared manual review with AI-assisted matching under the same staffing, records and release cutoff. Estimate civilian diesel coverage only from usable finished stock, confirmed receipts and verified delivery limits.
Import concentration alone supplies no probability of disruption and no estimate of diesel availability, diplomatic intent, or AI benefit. This historical comparison supplies no approval for a transaction.
What evidence would we need?
- Customs observations with dates, product definitions, consistent units and a common denominator.
- Independently verified finished-fuel stock, receipts and daily demand in the declared civilian service area.
- Review time, corrections and missed discrepancies for each approach, and a local fallback exercise.
Compare current practice, human cooperation, and AI assistance Test whether the steps help or hinder each other
Browse the other trade and fuel cases Try the Lab outcome estimator