Study on the robustness of China's oil import network

The robustness of the oil import network is critical to energy security, as approximately 70% of the oil consumed in China is obtained from other countries. However, during long-distance transportation, external shocks constantly threaten the imported network because of the particular commodity nature of oil. To explore the network's resistance to external shocks, namely the robustness, we made the following efforts. Firstly, Combined with the complex network, China's oil import network (COIN) was constructed. Then the robustness of the network under two nodes failures, random attacks and malicious attacks, was simulated and measured. Finally, a virtual network was constructed to verify the effect of structural change on improving robustness. The research conclusions are as follows: (1) Overall, the robustness of COIN is relatively poor. The robustness of the network under malicious attacks is much lower than that of random attacks. (2) The performance curves of COIN under external shocks were almost identical, and there was no year in which COIN was more resistant to external shocks from 2011 to 2019. (3) The new nodes and edges have greatly improved the network robustness, even though the scale-free characteristics of the network have not been changed. •Robustness of China's oil import network is measured using the complex network.•In malicious attacks, the network is even more fragile to node failures than in random attacks.•A virtual oil import network is constructed, which is more robust than in 2019.