Whodunnit?
 

Who nuked the oil fields/refineries of Ploesti, Romania? Does canon specify?

The Soviets are cited as using tactical nukes in Romania first, to break Romanian resistance in September, 1997. However, it doesn't make a lot of sense to nuke a strategic objective that you have every intention, and realistic chances, of capturing.

I think it makes the most sense that the US did it. With Romania's organized resistance crumbling in the summer of 1997, and no realistic prospects of NATO forces recapturing Ploesti, NATO would be eager to deny its use to the Soviets.

But from Med Cruise, we know that oil production at Ploesti resumed some time prior to summer, 2000. That suggests tactical nuclear weapons were used, rather than strategic, and airbursts instead of ground strikes.

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France? Deny the resource to everybody?

Surprise is French for Surprise
 

Now that is a very interesting idea. I was so intrigued by it that I jsut double-checked the v1 history to see if the timing would line up. Unfortunately, I don't think it does. The Ploesti oil fields would have been under Soviet control when France enters the war in 1998. A French nuclear strike on Soviet-controlled territory (and Soviet troops in the area) wouldn't be taken too kindly.

Bummer. I wanted it to work.

France wouldn't be about to publicise their involvement, and would anyone else really be in a condition to determine where the strike came from, especially if fired from a sub?
France's move into the middle east and Africa wouldn't have happened on the spur of the moment either. They've clearly had time to observe what's going on around the world and make plans. Very likely any overt move on their part would have been preceded by months of build up and covert action.

That said, I doubt it was them. More likely in my opinion the Soviets used low yield tac nukes on Romanian troop concentrations rather than infrastructure. We know that the Romanians took out at least one Soviet Division (the 280th) by ambush (albeit one wracked by desertions, etc). What better way to neutralise them than by making them glow in the dark? A handful of nukes is also a lot quicker than moving other units into the area for conventional operations and would be able to be carried out before the Romanians could disburse.

Hmm, evil thought - what if the Soviets used the 280th as bait? It was a mobilisation only unit and not exactly effective anyway.... Timeline probably doesn't work too well, but...
:firedevil

Who's Nukin' Who?
 

That could work. I suppose an SLBM could be impossible to source, unless you had a unit tracking it (and then why would you let it launch, right?). Hm. Maybe it was the French... :confused:

Yes, the Soviets could have done it, but it seems like the work required to repair the Ploesti refineries and restore them to production after a nuking wouldn't be worth the satisfaction of instantly wiping out the Romanian division defending the facilities. Canon, isn't specific on this point, though, so it's not out of the question. Here's what the v1 history has to say:

In September of 1997, “Limited use of tactical nuclear weapons, the increasing numbers of Soviet reserves, and the withdrawal of the Yugoslavians caused the Romanian front to collapse. As Warsaw Pact columns swept through both countries, isolated military units withdrew into the mountains and began to wage a guerilla war.” V1 Ref’s manual, pp. 25-26

So yeah, the Soviets could have nuked the oil fields, but that still seems really counterproductive, considering the prize. I bet it was the Americans. The SVG mentions that, "the 321st [MRD] was hit by a nuclear strike on its way to Romania," so clearly someone else- probably the Americans- was slinging tac-nukes in Romania too.

Devious! I think you're right about the timeline not cooperating, though. The SVG says the 280th MRD was destroyed in the spring of 2018, almost a year after the tactical nuclear strikes mentioned in the v1 history quoted above.

Well you've got most of the nukes happening in the second half of 1997 with another weaker exchange around Autumn 1998. Nothing to say there weren't a few small tac nukes used in the meantime though especially since the timelines are primarily referring to strategic level strikes.
We do know the Romanians were reforming regular combat units in early 98 and so would be a very tempting target, especially with NATO attempting to push into Czechoslovakia around this time and forcing the PACT to relocate units to counter them.

Of course there's nothing in canon about any of this, but it is an interesting and plausible idea nonetheless.

Dragging this zombie thread back to its original topic, I just came across this article on (very!) makeshift oil refineries in Syria. I can certainly see something similar happening in the T2k context for areas that have oil wells, or even a loaded crude oil tanker, pipeline or tank farm to salvage from.

https://www.middleeasteye.net/fr/in-...ries-617075533

And the description in the article of what RL conditions are for the unfortunate folks that are working them would probably be similar in the T2kU.

On a related technical note, given the ubiquitousness of methanol as a transportation fuel in T2K, it's probably worth pointing out that getting ethanes (aka gasoline length hydrocarbons) from methanol to gas conversion is probably less technologically challenging than getting gasoline from sour crude.

https://www.netl.doe.gov/research/co...ol-to-gasoline

Probably not exactly great in terms of net return on energy, but it's one of the processes used to create gasoline from natural gas (which is mostly methane).

Methane -> methanol -> ethanes.

I've always been interested in these types of improvised refineries in a T2K context. They exist throughout the world ranging from this type of primitive facility in war-torn places like Syria and Chechnya to fairly standardised low complexity "teapot" refineries throughout China.

I think that the availability of basic refined products would be higher than it's presented to be in the world (certainly 1st edition) and I think every faction would be trying to develop this type of thing.

Even more so: Ceaușescu'S Romania had left the Warsaw Pact in all but name, which they figured was the red line for the Soviets. Socialist Romania didn't allow for Soviet troops within its borders and it had its own defense industry producing upgrades for T-55s (still in service today) and knock-ofs of stuff like the BTR-70 and the BMP-1.

I wrote this somewhere on the board a while back: By the 1980s, the Warsaw Pact was a scam. The only true ally the Soviets could count on was the East German GDR, and that only for the facts that the Soviets had so many divisions in country and Premier Honecker was a staunch believer. The ČSSR was economically least dependent on the Soviets and had a good army, but their leadership lacked the blind belief of the GDR. The Polish hatred towards the Russians made them an ally the Soviets didn't trust. Hungary had no army to fool anybody - the officer's corps never recovered from the aftermath of the 1956 revolution and the beating they took from the Soviets.

Bulgaria, last but not least, had an army honest to God still fielding T-34s in active divisions with the rest of the equipment barely better. They never made it out of the 1960s and that only with the airforce (MiG-21, Su-22, MiG-23MF as mainstay). The army did receive some 300 T-72s late in the Cold War, but a good chunk still was T-34s, SU-100s and a lot of towed WW2 vintage artillery.

Ceaușescu absurdly overspent on the military, but more out of fear of the Soviets than the West. It cost him everything in the end, since he starved his people to death, sometimes literally. He was one of the most brutal dictators in Europe after World War Two, which is saying something. However, economically, Romania was outpacing other Eastern Bloc countries by far during the 1980s, thanks to heavy investments from Western nations since the 1960s and many economic ties: the Canadians even built a nuclear power plant, which still produces around 20 % of Romanian electric power (however, a second reactor block was added in 2007). Ceaușescu certainly did his part to make the Romanians suffer under his austerity, though.

I think there would be a lot of local refining and inventiveness, but I wonder if what was produced would be too valuable to burn in light of the need for lubricants and its value as a trade good. How tough is it to refine motor oil and axle grease?

Doubt it would be too valuable to burn. Mechanization for a lot of people would be the difference between life and death. A farmer with a tractor can plow a lot of land. Plowing even 40 acres with animal labor isn't easy or fast, and without animal labor...you are looking at maybe a few acres, per person.

So, it doesn't take a petrochemical engineer to get low molecular weight hydrocarbons (eg, ethanes) out of oil, which are the primary energetic component in gasoline. A lot of wells will produce "drip gas" as well, which is considered "natural" gasoline. The problem is, these low molecular weight hydrocarbons have an octane rating of around 50. It works fine in low compression, long stroke piston engines, but does not work (really at all) in modern high compression engines.

A big part of the modern gasoline / diesel refining process is not so much in the fractional distillation of oil into liquids but in the additives downstream of the raw refinery process. The easiest/cheapest way to boost the octane is to use TEL or tetra ethyl lead. This has other downsides, like lowering IQ in children. MBTE is another additive they used to use to boost octane before it started showing up in ground water and reservoirs. You can use ethanol also, but it's not nearly as helpful in ratio terms. In any event, the big challenge for producing gasoline would be getting the right additive chemicals added in, almost all of which are downstream from an intact oil industry (and the chemical plants are usually located in close physical proximity to existing refineries). These are the things that would require a petrochemical engineer and some chemists to get going starting from the ground up. Not impossible, especially in university towns near oil fields (e.g., Texas Tech in Lubbock probably has the brain power to stand something up more or less from scratch).