Oil in T2k

First, let's hop in the way back machine. Oil is not new. One does not need a 50 million dollar refinery in order to use it.

Here's the Wiki Data:

The Chinese were among the first civilizations to refine oil.[6] As early as the first century, the Chinese were refining crude oil for use as an energy source.[7][6] Between 512 and 518, in the late Northern Wei Dynasty, the Chinese geographer, writer and politician Li Daoyuan introduced the process of refining oil into various lubricants in his famous work Commentary on the Water Classic.[8][7][6]

Crude oil was often distilled by Arab chemists, with clear descriptions given in Arabic handbooks such as those of Muhammad ibn Zakarīya Rāzi (854–925).[9] The streets of Baghdad were paved with tar, derived from petroleum that became accessible from natural fields in the region. In the 9th century, oil fields were exploited in the area around modern Baku, Azerbaijan. These fields were described by the Arab geographer Abu al-Hasan 'Alī al-Mas'ūdī in the 10th century, and by Marco Polo in the 13th century, who described the output of those wells as hundreds of shiploads.[10] Arab and Persian chemists also distilled crude oil in order to produce flammable products for military purposes. Through Islamic Spain, distillation became available in Western Europe by the 12th century.[11]

In the Northern Song Dynasty (960–1127), a workshop called the "Fierce Oil Workshop", was established in the city of Kaifeng to produce refined oil for the Song military as a weapon. The troops would then fill iron cans with refined oil and throw them toward the enemy troops, causing a fire – effectively the world's first "fire bomb". The workshop was one of the world's earliest oil refining factories where thousands of people worked to produce Chinese oil powered weaponry.[12]

Prior to the nineteenth century, petroleum was known and utilized in various fashions in Babylon, Egypt, China, Philippines, Rome and Azerbaijan. However, the modern history of the petroleum industry is said to have begun in 1846 when Abraham Gessner of Nova Scotia, Canada devised a process to produce kerosene from coal. Shortly thereafter, in 1854, Ignacy Łukasiewicz began producing kerosene from hand-dug oil wells near the town of Krosno, Poland.

The world's first systematic petroleum refinery was built in Ploiești, Romania in 1856 using the abundant oil available in Romania.

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The first car was:

The Benz Patent-Motorwagen ("patent motorcar"), built in 1885, is widely regarded as the world's first production automobile,[1] that is, a vehicle designed to be propelled by an internal combustion engine.

After developing a successful gasoline-powered two-stroke piston engine in 1873, Benz focused on developing a motorized vehicle while maintaining a career as a designer and manufacturer of stationary engines and their associated parts.

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So with that as the baseline - oil, refined petroleum, and the combustion engine have been around for more than 115 years - we're probably set to move forward to talk about fields, oil wells, refining the amounts needed to supply a modern society, and what happens when you decrease demand by few billion people or so.

[Rainbow Six]

I think there’s a challenge in that canon is vague about what got targeted and what didn’t. That’s understandable as it clearly isn’t practical to list the fate of every single refinery on the planet but it does leave things open to a subjective interpretation.

Venezuela springs immediately to mind. From memory I think it has the second largest reserves in the World. I have vague recollections of reading something about Venezuelan facilities being nuked, but I can’t be certain (and it could have been something someone posted here rather than something that’s canon).

Dependent on what’s happened in Gabon (fairly sure it’s unmentioned in V1) they could be supplying the Franco Belgian Union with oil. Chad could also be involved in that. Although that maybe starts leading into the bigger picture that is the Franco Belgian Union (once upon a time I had a notion to create an FBU sourcebook as a companion to my UK work). I think there’s an inference in Going Home that the French are getting oil from somewhere…

Malaysia could be producing / refining / selling oil and gas. Maybe the Malaysians could carve themselves out a niche as a local power bloc, not sure. Our Australian contingent probably know that part of the World better in terms of whether Malaysia might have got involved in any local conflicts (e.g. a possible Australian / Indonesian War). Indonesia is also a big producer but I think it’s more or less a given that they would be in a shooting war with Indonesia.

[Legbreaker]

Re Malaysia, it's outside the scope of my current research.

I can say that in T2K Australia is producing some oil for domestic and local allied use, the biggest problem being Australian refineries are located on the other side of the continent for the most part and set up to use a completely different grade of crude. They can process Australian oil, but it's very inefficient with lots of waste, and then there's the small problem of transporting the crude to the refineries in the first place (there's no major pipelines such as from Alaska).

One small note from Mediterranean Cruise is Libya is producing a trickle of oil, but the only refining is letting it settle in barrels before scooping the top layer off to burn in diesels.

Originally Posted by Legbreaker

One small note from Mediterranean Cruise is Libya is producing a trickle of oil, but the only refining is letting it settle in barrels before scooping the top layer off to burn in diesels.

This is good to know! I like that improvised distillation method.