Japan gains oil self-sufficiency in 1937

Could an oil-self-sufficient Japan defeat China without attacking the Allies, and how would that change the Second World War?

It could sustain the China war longer and might avoid attacking south, while the Allies lose their strongest economic means of coercion.

Oil self-sufficiency eliminates the shortage that made the southern resource area strategically compelling and could even create export revenue. Japan still needs scrap iron and other materials, but those constraints can be addressed through different suppliers. Refining capacity and technical expertise would still be needed to turn oil into aviation fuel and feedstocks for synthetic rubber. A participant raises that industrial constraint, then accepts that the question's promise to satisfy all oil needs largely assumes it away. The United States loses the embargo pressure expected to force a retreat, making prolonged war in China more likely and a direct Pacific attack less necessary. The discussion also notes that Japan historically designed around rubber scarcity and that American submarines later attacked rubber-carrying ships as well as tankers, showing how multiple imported materials constrained the war economy.