Not only is Hamas weakened, Hamas' and Iran's supporter (China, Russia) has been severely weakened compared to the start of the conflict. Russia is in a stalemate in the Ukraine invasion, and has lost significant economic and military resources since. Russia also lost significant influence in Middle East, with the Assad regime fall. China is a severe economic decline. Also, China distanced itself from Iran, most likely due to wanting to not get sanctioned by US and Europe. https://thediplomat.com/2024/11/china-is-recalculating-its-m....
1.) there's no need to focus on barrels per day; fuel export revenue per day is more important. and from the link, we can see that it was around 1B EUR per day in 2022, and now it's around 600M EUR per day in Dec. 2024. Not great, but as we will see, it's mainly propped up by China.
2.) top 4 buyers of Russia fossil fuels in December 2024 are China, Turkey, India, and EU. China being top buyer is not surprising, given they are allied in the war - China is cutting off drones to Ukraine while supplying more to Russia.
3.) fossil fuel shipment departures from Russia has steadily declined from 80% in Jan 2022, to less than 20% in December 2024.
The co-mingling of Russian and Chinese naval forces is also very evident recently, with the recent cutting of European underwater cable. Are Russia and China conducting undersea sabotage? | DW News
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ObgVV-HJtI
> Doesn’t make their oil carrying capacity any lesser
They’re derelicts fond of puking up their contents [1]. More practically, dark crude sells at a 20 to 30% discount. (Granted, I know the Indian numbers more confidently than the Chinese refiners’.)
Most of these EV companies in China are going bankrupt, selling each car at a loss. Recently, Ji Yum Auto, founded by Baidu and Neely, shut down last December. A live streamer was live streaming selling the car. Upon hearing the news, she was bawling and told the listener to not to check out the car https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HYdm2K81bW0.
To put this in perspective, the number of car manufacturers in China has dropped from 300 to 150 in the past few years. Further consolidation is expected.
So it's probably a good idea to buy from an EV company that is profitable. For example BYD has a gross profit margin of over 20%. That's approximately double the profitability of Western firms.
