couldn't have said it any better

That's actually the intended behavior: while reserves are silently being spend is when the crisis is brewing. Although the main point is that nobody knows China's reserves, but this allows to calibrates scenarios based on what you believe is plausible

That's kind of the point because it hasn't been totally 100% closed. There's both sanctioned and unsanctioned oil flowing, which is the point of the scenarios in the simulation. Also it's more of a simulation/stress tool at a sustained closure than a prediction one

it came from the data (UN Comtrade) that notably doesn't include sanctioned oil flows (Iran, etc). On top of that, China's reserve levels are a state secret, yet, the model's framework is BYOD (Bring Your Own Data) which gives the depletion timeline for free. Also, the model is more of a sensible baseline than a prediction

Thanks! Two answers (repeated in other comments): UN Comtrade data doesn't include sanctioned oil (Iran), and nobody (except their government) knows China's actual stockpile. The model is more of a sensible baseline/stress testing tool than a prediction, the cool part is that anyone can BTON (bring their own numbers) and rerun their scenarios

Yes, and the network setting is flexible enough to allow smaller supply chains where nodes don't have price setting power

the models, proofs and writing are mine (with some AI assistance for proofreading/formatting). AI was mostly used in the visualization and the rerunning of multiple scenarios of the numerical examples

Thanks, added to list of possible UX improvements

This pipeline predates the data but its oil is routed to Bab-el-Mandeb which is in the network. That being said, the numbers are more of a sensible baseline as the actual flows for many countries are unknown/sanctioned.

This is a nice idea. I will build this a feature on the scenarios menu. And it would give an estimate of how much time doing this buys China under different configurations