Wednesday 17 June 2015

China Oil inquriy - Situation Normal


The Capitalists have been at work, hence the slight interupption in service....

A quick update to the China Oil stories of last week. Apparently, apart from a few arrests and minor indiscretions all is well now - there is even an official looking press release on Reuters.

So perhaps there was nothing to it after all....

Anyway now for a fun game - how much money was alleged to me to be missing do you think?

A) $60 million
B) $600 million
C) $6 billion
D) $60 billion
E) $600 billion

(As a pointer, the physical crude trade alone in China is around $1 billion per day, double that or more when you add in refined products, then there are derivatives etc that all the majors play with)

Answers in the comments.

8 comments:

david morris said...

What he said....

The end game is to get rid of the corrupt people who are not your mates and replace them with similar who are. The idea of ending the corruption is for the birds, at best they just want to stop it being so egregious that it starts revolutions.

Bill Quango MP said...

I say B - which is also E

DtP said...

As per BQ - wouldn't be too sexy if it was less than $60 billion.

CityUnslicker said...

hmm...now corrected.

Nick Drew said...

"nepotism, building extravagant offices ... use of official funds for entertainment"

surely not !?!

$$$? Hmm - not much cash involved in derivatives able to 'go missing' unless they are heavily ITM and big margin payments have been made. Maybe someone shorted oil massively just before the 2014 crash? For order of magnitude, let's suppose the best part of a year's worth of Chinese crude demand before the price collapse: in round numbers, 10 million barrels/day * 300 days = 3 bn barrels * $50/bbl (= difference between $100 - $50) = $150 billion. Could someone half-inch 40% of this? (could someone be rumoured to nick it? - more likely). Just about.

Could someone do 4-5 years' worth of this? Sounds a bit implausible.

So I'm going with £60 billion. Not much by our standards, I know, but the cost of living in Beijing is quite modest, I'm told

solid gold bullets in the back of the head all round

Sebastian Weetabix said...

I say £6 billion. If they had got 60 they'd be running the place... and it wouldn't be called corruption anymore.

hovis said...

Ahh SW in the vein of Sir John Harrington, courtier and inventor of the WC ... "Treason doth never prosper, what's the reason? For if it prosper, none dare call it Treason."

Anonymous said...

600 - that is properly being at it. hence the whole thing being covered up!