China's oil loans run into trouble

China extended much credit to secure oil supplies. Now it needs borrowers to start repaying

China's policy banks are caught in a cleft stick as some of their massive loans to boost offshore oil flows run into trouble because of political and economic problems in recipient countries. In the wake of the collapse in crude prices, lenders such as China Development Bank (CDB) and Exim-Bank are pouring good money after bad. In its decade-long efforts to mitigate domestic disruptions in the supply of crude with higher flows from abroad, Beijing has pursued two different investment techniques. In one, the deep-pocketed policy banks have swapped infrastructure-targeted debt in exchange for exports of crude back to China, almost exclusively by those nations' state-owned producers. In the oth