That great, so the US, which produces all the oil it needs within its borders, needs to be present in the Middle East, but China, which produces some oil, but not enough to run its current fleet of cars and trucks, let alone fight a war, does not need to be in the Middle East. Interesting analysis :)

Note that Russia's oil does not help China here: the infrastructure in Russia only allows export via European ports, not Asian ports and not over the Russia-China border, though with the construction of a few 5,000-km-long pipelines, I guess that could change in a few years if Russia cares enough.

PRC extracts ~4 million barrels per day, they're a continental sized land power with resources, not JP. IIRC US military consumes 90 million barrels per year / 240k barrels per day. PRC domestic consumption is 14m barrels per day. ~6m goes to transportation, 2m goes to heating, both in process of being electrified. 2m goes to other. Industry, uses ~4m barrels, of which PRC MIC uses relatively little as % of output relative to behemoth that is entire PRC manufacturing/industry. TLDR short/medium term, they can ration transportation, focus industry on MIC, and sustain military multiple times their current size on wartime economy, indefinitly. Medium/long term with rapid electrification and some RU piplines they can operate normally. There's also estimated 300m barrels and growing in strategic reserves. And that's assuming US blockades PRC MENA oil, in which case US refineries on CONUS probably going boom. It doesn't matter how much oil you have in the ground if you can't protect your extraction infra. Entire PRC Malacca dilemma assumes US can choke PRC SLOC unilaterally with little consequence to herself, the calculus changes when CONUS serenity is on the line, which looks like PRC end game when they indicated they're pursuing conventional global strike program a few years ago.

US isn't in Middle East to protect their oil sources in case of war. US is in Middle East to control oil prices, do policing, help Israel and threat Iran and other regional actors.

I believe Russia and China signed agreements for building gas and oil pipes.

I agree with your "control oil prices" only if it means making sure Iran or some other country does not close the Strait of Hormuz to oil tankers.

> though with the construction of a few 5,000-km-long pipelines, I guess that could change in a few years if Russia cares enough

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altai_gas_pipeline

https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/putin-says-oil-pipel...

Interesting. From the second link: "Russia currently sends gas to China through the Power of Siberia 1 pipeline, which began operating in 2019 and runs through eastern Siberia into northeast China. Experts say that as China is not expected to need additional gas supply until after 2030, Beijing could drive a hard bargain on price for a second pipeline via Siberia."

Ummm, who's going to make sure all the oil comes from the middle east? It's not like the US needs to import light sweet crude from there since the refineries are made for heavier oil than comes from Saudi or fracking.