U.S. Patrols

“Policing the region imposes a cost on us, and benefits the Chinese,” Blair said in an interview. A few Iranian officials recently have threatened to shut the passage if the U.S. and Europe enforce tough oil sanctions. The U.S. military is flying 24-hour drone missions every three days in the Strait and the Persian Gulf and 12-hour sorties by Lockheed Martin Corp. manned P-3 surveillance aircraft, according to Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Jonathan Greenert and Navy Captain Jim Hoke. The U.S. gets 18 percent of its crude and petroleum products from the Persian Gulf, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. UGG Kensington Boots China imported 5.09 million barrel a day of oil in the first eleven months last year, of which 51 percent came from the Middle East. Imports from Iran rose 5.3 percent in the period from a year earlier to 25.32 million metric tons, accounting for 11 percent of China’s total, according to Chinese customs data. As the world’s second-largest economy after the U.S., China often gets to be an economic free rider “even absent the current tensions in the Persian Gulf,” said Erica Downs, a China and energy specialist at the Brookings Institution, a research group in Washington.