As a vital strategic resource, oil has an essential influence on the world economy, diplomacy and military development. Using oil trade data to dynamically monitor and warn about international trade risks is an urgent need. Based on the UN Comtrade data from 1988 to 2017, we construct unweighted and weighted global oil trade networks (OTNs). Complex network theories have some advantages in analyzing global oil trade as a system with numerous economies and complicated relationships. This paper establishes a trading-based network model for global oil trade to study the evolving efficiency, criticality and robustness of economies and the relationships between oil trade partners. The results show that for unweighted OTNs, the efficiency of oil flows gradually increases with growing complexity of the OTNs, and the weighted efficiency indicators are more capable of highlighting the impact of major events on the OTNs. The identified critical economies and trade relationships have more important strategic significance in the real market. The simulated deliberate attacks corresponding to national bankruptcy, trade blockade, and economic sanctions have a more significant impact on the robustness than random attacks. When the economies are promoting high-quality economic development, and continuously enhancing positions in the OTN, more attention needs be paid to the identified critical economies and trade relationships. To conclude, some suggestions for application are given according to the results.
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