Venezuela in TW 2000

[Olefin]

That's why MilGov went thru the trouble of pulling an armored brigade out to be able to clear the Mississippi - they needed to be able to get oil up to the Robinson refinery in Illinois and using the river is probably the best way to do it

and that refinery still being in full operation (at least until the accident in Howling Wilderness) shows they didn't hit every major refinery with nukes - that's a 200,000+ barrels per day facility - definitely qualifies to be hit but yet there it is

I suspect the places with working refineries are going to be in Oklahoma (Ardmore or Wynnewood for instance) or Kansas given the presence of MilGov troops as well as near Bakersfield in CA - there are three small refineries in Bakersfield that are way way too small to expend a nuke on but perfect to provide enough oil to keep the reduced forces there are in CA going

[Targan]

MilGov may also have sent troops to non-functional refineries to salvage surviving difficult-to-manufacture parts to then transport to refineries that were more intact and/or were in better locations in terms of transport hubs, ability to be protected etc.

Also as has been mentioned in other discussions over the years, the Soviets' targeting systems were notoriously unreliable, and as the war progressed their ability to perform post-strike reconnaissance became more difficult or impossible, so some facilities like refineries may have been damaged by near-misses but not obliterated. If the Soviets couldn't get eyes-on but noted through other means that fuel production had dropped, they might assume the job was done. But in reality some refineries may have been put out of commission temporarily but been intact enough to have been brought back into production later, particularly if critical parts could be salvaged from elsewhere and the EMP-affected electronics could be repaired, replaced or bypassed.

[Legbreaker]

Same could be said for targets in Pact controlled areas too. Without satellite surveillance and communications, it would be very difficult to confirm the details of a hit. Sure you might have people (spies) in the area, but who's going to want to go towards a possible nuke crater? Orders be damned when it comes to personal survival for most (if not all sane) people.

[Olefin]

which is probably why Ploesti survived and was able to be put back into operation - my GM surmised that the NATO strike against the refinery had been one that was supposed to limit collateral damage to the city as much as possible (because Romania was a NATO member) and as a result they didn't destroy it, they damaged it enough to take it off line - and that it took till 2000 for the Soviets to get it back into operation

that's why our version of Med Cruise ended with a nuke strike that definitely 100% took it out for good and if it killed Romanians then it did - because they were looking to win the war in Europe one way or another and civilian casualties be damned