China has stashed away far more oil than any other country, according to U.S. government data released this week.

Why it matters: The stockpile, which surged last year, is emerging as a strategic advantage as the world faces an oil shock with the Strait of Hormuz largely shut.

The big picture: China is a huge winner in the Iran war due in large part to its positioning on energy, including its oil stockpile.

• It also owns over 70% of global solar, wind, battery and electric vehicle supply chains.
• Those are all seeing a boost as import-dependent countries turn from oil and natural gas to renewables.

Between the lines: "The war was the stress test that Beijing's energy strategy was designed for," Axios co-founder and CEO Jim VandeHei wrote in a recent Behind the Curtain column on China.

Driving the news: China's stockpiling surged in 2025 due to several factors, according to a February paper from the Oxford Institute for Energy Studies:

• Relatively low oil prices tied to softer demand.
• Rising geopolitical risks, including disruptions tied to sanctions on major suppliers to China like Russia, Venezuela and Iran.
• A new domestic energy law that required companies to hold more reserves.

By the numbers: China added an average of 1.1 million barrels a day of crude to its strategic oil inventories in 2025, which reached nearly 1.4 billion barrels in December, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.

• Before the Iran conflict, which began in late February, preliminary government data suggest China had continued to build inventories into this year.

Context: China doesn't report data on its oil inventories, so EIA said it estimated the inventories based on imports, exports, refining and oil inventory data from third-party and official sources.

Catch up quick: The International Energy Agency coordinated the largest-ever release of oil reserves on March 11, making up to 400 million barrels available.

• China is not an IEA member and was thus not part of that release.

The intrigue: The U.S. reserve, which can hold about 714 million barrels, stood at roughly 413 million in December and slipped to around 409 million after the March release.

• It remains well below capacity after a record 2022 drawdown following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, with refilling happening gradually as officials wait for lower prices.
• That's unlikely to happen any time soon with the Iran war raging.

The bottom line: China's moves last year are looking increasingly prescient.

📈 U.S. crude oil and petroleum product exports hit another fresh record last week, averaging 12.88 million barrels per day, federal data shows.

• Why it matters: I know, I know, weekly data is notoriously noisy. But the trend is clear as importing nations scramble for supplies.

💵 Brent crude oil is comfortably back above $100 per barrel — it's $102.10 as we sent this edition — with the Strait of Hormuz still throttled and no clear path to a U.S.-Iran deal.

• Threat level: "If no progress is made, the market will become increasingly numb to the noise and headlines that have dictated price action recently," ING analysts said in a note.

😬 Fully clearing mines from the Strait of Hormuz could take six months, a senior U.S. military official told lawmakers in a classified briefing, the Washington Post reports.

↩️ Via the FT, "The EU is considering dropping its opposition to new oil and gas drilling in the Arctic as it seeks to shore up energy supplies in response to the crisis in the Middle East."

At the start of the war, stocks fell and oil prices rose on fears of the economic fallout from a historic energy shock — now that connection is fraying.

Why it matters: It highlights a key distinction between the stock market, which frequently seems to trade on vibes and memes, and commodities markets, which ultimately are tethered to real physical goods.

The latest: Stocks rose yesterday after President Trump extended the ceasefire, but oil prices also went up on worries that the world is running low on oil.

• Both the U.S. and Iran are now trying to keep traffic from flowing through the critical Strait of Hormuz.

Catch up quick: When the conflict began, it seemed as if oil futures were trading like a meme, rising and falling depending on statements from the White House.

• But more than two weeks ago, when Trump first announced a ceasefire, the connection broke.

The big picture: Oil prices remain high because the ceasefire is obviously fragile, and because in the real world, a lot of oil has stopped flowing.

Yes, but: Oil prices are still far below what analysts predicted at the start of the war.

• Some of this is due to what's called "backwardation," which simply means that investors believe that the price of oil will be lower in the future.
• Even the price for so-called dated Brent, or physical spot oil, is off the highs seen a few weeks ago.

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Airlines are raising fees and cutting routes as the cost of jet fuel soars, which could revive interest in a radical airplane design that promises big fuel savings.

Why it matters: Fuel is airlines' single biggest cost — and one of the few they can't control.

• A clean-sheet airplane design that improves aerodynamics could be a game-changer — if developers can muster the financial and technical resources needed to get their designs off the ground.

The big picture: Blended-wing body aircraft — planes that look like manta rays, with the fuselage and wings morphed into one fluid shape — are suddenly looking more attractive.

• Lower drag resistance and better lift promise to cut fuel consumption by 30% or more.
• "If somebody can make it work, they're going to start printing money," Graham Phero, an aviation patent attorney at Sterne Kessler, tells Axios.

What we're watching: Two U.S. aerospace startups, both stocked with industry veterans, are pushing to bring blended-wing planes to reality.

• Jet Zero, which has raised $226 million to date and is backed by United Airlines and Alaska Airlines, has a $235 million Defense Department contract to develop a full-size demonstrator by 2027.
• Natilus announced $28 million in Series A financing earlier this year led by Draper Associates and various strategic investors in aerospace, defense and global freight logistics.

Catch up quick: The blended-wing concept dates back to the 1940s, when U.S. aircraft designer Jack Northrop pioneered the idea of "flying wing" aircraft, later developed as the B-2 stealth bomber, which proved the concept works.

• Now, after advances in materials, computers and fly-by-wire controls, it is becoming more feasible as a commercial plane.

Yes, but: AeroDynamic Advisory consultant Richard Aboulafia sees "big, big hurdles" to bringing blended-wing designs to market.

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That's the increase in the number of local government meetings that discussed data centers between early 2023 and the present, new analysis finds.

The big picture: "Nearly 10% of local government meetings discussed data centers since March 2026, up from less than 1% of meetings between January and March 2023," University of Michigan and MIT researchers write.

• They explored 150,000 transcripts of meetings in 48 states from 2007 to 2026.
• The working paper shows residents' concerns around power prices, land use, water and more.

The bottom line: People who participate in the meetings are "cautiously optimistic" but are "overall more concerned about how data centers will negatively impact their communities," it states.

"We have an opportunity to draft off that to bring along as many innovative technologies as we can that otherwise were slowly moving along."