China cut its oil imports in half. No one knows why.

When Iran shut down the Strait of Hormuz five months ago, experts predicted oil could spike to $150 or $200 a barrel. It has barely topped $100. According to Rogé Karma, writing in The Atlantic, the reason may be China, which abruptly cut its oil imports by half.

China was already the world's largest oil importer, buying more than the whole of Europe. The barrels it stopped buying, about 5 million a day, equal a quarter of what the closed strait removed from world supply — enough to keep prices from spiking further. What nobody outside China knows is how, or why.

Conservation isn't the answer: traffic congestion hasn't budged. Neither is a shift to electric vehicles, which spreads through an economy over years, or extra oil smuggled in from Russia, since tankers that size can't unload at major ports unnoticed. China's reserve tanks have stayed full too, leaving analysts to guess at hidden stockpiles. "We have almost no evidence of it," said Rory Johnston, an oil-markets analyst. "And yet, it's really the only explanation that makes any sense."

Previously:
• At $4 a gallon again, even Republicans are souring on the Iran war
• Trump promised cheap gas and no new wars. Thanks, MAGA!