Oil in T2k

[Raellus]

The subject of refinery production figures in the Middle East v. Olefin's Kenya came up in another thread but I think the wider topic of oil deserves its own thread.

The idea of exploiting oil shale on the Baltic shelf has been brought up elsewhere.

Where is being produced, refined? Who has access to it? Who controls it? What is its importance in the year 2000?

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.

===

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.

===
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.

[Olefin]

Originally Posted by Raellus

The subject of refinery production figures in the Middle East v. Olefin's Kenya came up in another thread but I think the wider topic of oil deserves its own thread.

The idea of exploiting oil shale on the Baltic shelf has been brought up elsewhere.

Where is being produced, refined? Who has access to it? Who controls it? What is its importance in the year 2000?

The French would be putting a lot of effort into getting refineries up and running in countries that were part of their old colonial system - given some of the dispositions of their military forces pre-war they would be in able to move troops to secure working refineries or get the ones that were damaged back up and running. That is something that wasnt in the canon specifically prior to the Kenya module but is now - and given the French interest in spreading their influence is a pretty logical assumption - i.e. controlling what oil is left is one reason they deployed into the Middle East in the RDF after all

[Rainbow Six]

Originally Posted by Olefin

That is something that wasnt in the canon specifically prior to the Kenya module but is now.

Just to be clear, that's the V2.2 canon only, correct?

[Olefin]

Originally Posted by Rainbow Six

Just to be clear, that's the V2.2 canon only, correct?

Rainbow why dont you and your buddy Spartan go take a nice long walk somewhere else. Frankly its getting old.

Its released for V2.2 canon because thats what Marc wanted. It was originally written for V1 but he requested it specifically be written to conform to the V2.2 timeline and rules as he wasnt interested in releasing new canon material for the V1 timeline.

However as per multiple posts here by you and others comparing the two canon timelines once the war started the V1 and V2.2 canons are just about identical. Thus the events of 1997-2001 pretty much follow the same pattern irregardless of the canon.

So the events described in Africa can apply for both timelines after the war start just as easily. And the French moves into Africa including in Djibouti and elsewhere come from the information in the RDF V1 module - thus I conformed to both timelines with what I wrote.

You can see - if you had ever actually read it - that the character generation, animal descriptions, etc. all conform to V2.2. rules as per Marc. However there are V1 RDF characters and events mentioned in the timeline and in other areas of the book - i.e. once the war starts the two timelines are basically identical.

Thus to answer you - the events in Africa about the French trying to get oil refineries working again (and the damage that happened in the first place including the nuke attacks) is all after the war start and can apply to both timelines.

[Rainbow Six]

Originally Posted by Olefin

Rainbow why dont you and your buddy Spartan go take a nice long walk somewhere else. Frankly its getting old.

That's not very civil or constructive Olefin, I was just asking a question for clarification as your original post was a little unclear.

Originally Posted by Olefin

Its released for V2.2 canon

So the answer to my question is yes. Thanks for clarifying.

[Olefin]

Actually it was very civil and constructive - thank you for giving me the information that I needed Rainbow.

And yes as I have said on several threads it was released - per Marc Miller's request who owns the game or did at the time it was released - as V2.2.

And again as has been discussed ad nausem here once the war gets going the V1 and V2.2 events are almost completely the same events - thus the two timelines differ before the war but then gel once the war goes general.

[wolffhound79]

Dont forget natural gas , in places where natural gas wells exist, a small community with the right equipment could keep warm thru the winter, cook food, run a blacksmith shop. I work as a production technologist tester in northern canada, many times if we needed too we could bleed gas off our gas separators to supply gas for our glycol heaters to run if we were out of propane for our P-tanks. Im talking about sweet wells as sour wells have the potential to kill you if you have a gas leak in your lines.

The bonus is sometimes you have produced oil or condi (as we called it) which is a greenish fluid with a high flamability. One of our former bosses blew up his office shack heating it up a cup of condi in the microwave.

Pump jacks are also useful, supplying fuel to the generator for a pump jack can get the pumping process started for lifting the oil to the surface. Im not sure about the US but we have field operators that drive around topping off fuel tanks and checking equipment and there are usually tons of manuals in field offices and certain field structures for not only operating but fixing dam near every small part. I still have a big binder of specific parts and instruments incase I ever neaded to fix or replace parts.

Many oil field site are great sources for finding many useful things, intrinsically safe heaters for the winter, parts, pipe, connectors, valves, gauges, sometimes large pigs of propane, random tools. Some companies go out of business, or just abandoned the site and sometimes they leave behind lots of useful material.

[Lurken]

Originally Posted by Raellus

The idea of exploiting oil shale on the Baltic shelf has been brought up elsewhere.

I planned to have Sweden to move in on Estonia to claim the oil and have them play cat and mouse with pirates based in Bornholm.

Then I read the East European Sourcebook. Under the Estonia chapter it written that Estonia trades with Helsinki and Königsberg. From how the wording is, it is implied that Estonia ships of crude oil for motor oil to Helsinki and Königsberg and in return they receive materials for the other Estonian industries. Heck, they even import the odd vehicle from Königsberg.

[Olefin]

"Many oil field site are great sources for finding many useful things, intrinsically safe heaters for the winter, parts, pipe, connectors, valves, gauges, sometimes large pigs of propane, random tools. Some companies go out of business, or just abandoned the site and sometimes they leave behind lots of useful material."

sounds like the start of a very good adventure thread

[wolffhound79]

Man you dont know how many times I would be on site sitting in the tank or my shack thinking about what I would do if the end of the world came what I could do with this kind of equipment to keep me alive, there was even an old abandoned well head just on the edge of my neighborhood.

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.

[StainlessSteelCynic]

The relationship between Malaysia and Indonesia would be quite interesting I think. Both nations have Islam as their primary religion but Malaysia still has a relationship with the British Commonwealth and various nations that were part of it. Despite their shared religion, I would think that the Malaysians would lean more towards those nations than they would towards Indonesia particularly as the Malaysia-Indonesia conflict is still within living memory of the older population.
For those who don't know of this particular war, a very rough description: - Indonesia actively sought to prevent the creation of the nation of Malaysia in the 1960s and various British Commonwealth nations fought in the war to allow Malaysia to come into existence.

Regardless of what infrastructure Malaysia might possess for refining oil, it should be remembered that the Malaysian region on the island of Borneo, surrounds the nation of Brunei.
And Brunei has oil.
The other nations in the region have oil but Brunei is basically a country that revolves around oil & natural gas - 90% of it's GDP was derived from crude oil and natural gas through the 1990s into the 2000s. It's built upon the back of oil & gas exports. A tempting target for Indonesia, they only have to hack their way through no more than 50-100 km (31-62 miles) of Malaysian territory to get to Brunei.

A big question would be, would Australia aid Malaysia if Indonesia decided to either attack Malaysia directly or tried to force their way through Malaysian territory to get Brunei?

[Legbreaker]

Originally Posted by StainlessSteelCynic

A big question would be, would Australia aid Malaysia if Indonesia decided to either attack Malaysia directly or tried to force their way through Malaysian territory to get Brunei?

In T2K? Not likely!
The will would be there, but the ability is sorely lacking. There's not even enough troops including New Zealand and most of the south pacific island nations to hold the Indonesians in PNG let alone open a second front.
And that's AFTER a massive increase in military forces by the defenders.

[StainlessSteelCynic]

It's certainly possible that a confrontation between Indonesia and Malaysia could be the beginning of any Indonesian campaign to capture Papua New Guinea. The Indonesians have long had territorial ambitions that cover Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines, Timor and Papua New Guinea.
There's so little information in canon that we can have it play out in whatever way we want.
It's also possible that Australian aid to Malaysia might be in other forms, e.g. intelligence, training, small arms ammo and so on.

[Legbreaker]

Intelligence I can see, but anything else, even training, is not going to be possible I'm afraid - every instructor, every rifle, every bullet is needed for Australia as they're basically having to double the size of the army alone almost overnight just to turn into a credible speed bump for the prewar Indonesian military strength.

[RN7]

I don't know what conditions are like in Venezuela in T2K but I would say they aren't very good. France could get involved in Venezuela because of its oil. There are active and quite large French military bases in French Guiana and in the Caribbean islands of Martinique and Guadeloupe that are near Venezuela. France could send forces to bolster whoever is running Venezuela to secure oil supplies.

[Raellus]

Here's an oil-related question for y'all. IIRC, Mediterranean Cruise identifies Ploesti, Romania as the source of the gasoline that fuels Soviet 4th Guards Tank Army's Summer 2000 counteroffensive (you know, the one that kills US 5th ID).

How did the Soviets get the gasoline from Romania to Poland?

Romanian partisans are very active in the Transylvania region. Much of Ukraine is in active rebellion. I don't think v1 canon mentions Moldavia, but I reckon it too is, at the very least, restive, given its ethnic connection to neighboring Romania (IRL many Moldavians wanted their country to be annexed by Romania after the fall of the Iron Curtain and dissolution of the USSR). Many regional transportation hubs have been damaged or destroyed by nuclear strikes. I imagine that the railroads are in very bad shape.

Has this question been addressed in a canonical source that I am not aware of?

I have a theory, but I'm interested in what y'all come up with.

[Legbreaker]

The 4th Guards didn't start in Poland, that's where they ended up. They carried their fuel with them.
They started (according to NATO intel) in the Ukraine, but it's not known exactly where. Getting the fuel from the refineries to the units was likely done by truck, rail and possibly ship as well. Plenty of options available and plenty of time to do it in to - we don't know which month's production was given to the 4th.....

[bash]

The Soviets getting fuel for their summer 2000 offensive is something they really only need to do once. So they could bum rush Romania with mechanized infantry, with minimal armor, followed by a fleet of trucks. The combat vehicles and trucks refuel and load fuel onto the trucks in barrels, tanks, and whatever.

The fuel force then rendezvous with the main body of armor. The armor could be loaded on trailers with APCs and gun trucks acting as convoy escorts. They can move along roads so long as they can minimally repair damaged sections. Partisans in Romania and elsewhere could inflict some damage but if the ROE is "shoot anyone approaching" they'll just wait for them to pass through.

Since this is one big move against forces they're reasonably sure they can rout they can just drop stragglers and broken down transports. The 5 ID's intelligence isn't likely much faster than the 4th Guard convoy. So they get the intel right before the shooting starts.

So...that's my theory.

[ChalkLine]

Currently my PCs are roving the Kraków trying to salvage bunker fuel to power the tug.

[Legbreaker]

Exactly. It's basically what happens with Division Cuba in 2001.
The 4th however have many more options available, plus other units in the area able to support them during the build up.

[swaghauler]

Originally Posted by wolffhound79

Dont forget natural gas , in places where natural gas wells exist, a small community with the right equipment could keep warm thru the winter, cook food, run a blacksmith shop. I work as a production technologist tester in northern canada, many times if we needed too we could bleed gas off our gas separators to supply gas for our glycol heaters to run if we were out of propane for our P-tanks. Im talking about sweet wells as sour wells have the potential to kill you if you have a gas leak in your lines.

The bonus is sometimes you have produced oil or condi (as we called it) which is a greenish fluid with a high flamability. One of our former bosses blew up his office shack heating it up a cup of condi in the microwave.

Pump jacks are also useful, supplying fuel to the generator for a pump jack can get the pumping process started for lifting the oil to the surface. Im not sure about the US but we have field operators that drive around topping off fuel tanks and checking equipment and there are usually tons of manuals in field offices and certain field structures for not only operating but fixing dam near every small part. I still have a big binder of specific parts and instruments incase I ever neaded to fix or replace parts.

Many oil field site are great sources for finding many useful things, intrinsically safe heaters for the winter, parts, pipe, connectors, valves, gauges, sometimes large pigs of propane, random tools. Some companies go out of business, or just abandoned the site and sometimes they leave behind lots of useful material.

This. And your typical "roughneck" is basically a "jack-of-all-trades" being able to Weld, do Carpentry, Electrical, Mechanical, and Hydraulic work. I have witnessed this first-hand hauling pipe to the oilfields in the Allegheny National Forest.

[wolffhound79]

This. And your typical "roughneck" is basically a "jack-of-all-trades" being able to Weld, do Carpentry, Electrical, Mechanical, and Hydraulic work. I have witnessed this first-hand hauling pipe to the oilfields in the Allegheny National Forest.

yes whole drilling crews usually have a wide range of skills and tricks of the trade to fix equipment and problems in the field as we rarely get the luxury of a shop day in the middle of a busy season. Ive frozen myself many times fixing broken parts in the field, or nursing a generator along with a leaky oil pan all night to keep from freezing, cold weather an prolong use is tough on equipment.

Im interested in that area as I have a group going into that region and it looks like there is a lot of battery operations in northern Pennsylvania right near a refinery in Bradford. I've also seen a lot of what looks like oil and gas services (storage tanks, equipment , facility's, manufacturing, service rigs, drilling rigs, wireline etc... ) I know in Alberta there is general oil and gas service companies all over the province.

[Raellus]

Originally Posted by bash

The Soviets getting fuel for their summer 2000 offensive is something they really only need to do once.

Good point, but we're talking a lot of fuel.

Originally Posted by bash

So they could bum rush Romania with mechanized infantry, with minimal armor, followed by a fleet of trucks. The combat vehicles and trucks refuel and load fuel onto the trucks in barrels, tanks, and whatever.

The fuel force then rendezvous with the main body of armor. The armor could be loaded on trailers with APCs and gun trucks acting as convoy escorts. They can move along roads so long as they can minimally repair damaged sections. Partisans in Romania and elsewhere could inflict some damage but if the ROE is "shoot anyone approaching" they'll just wait for them to pass through.

The Carpathians are no joke- narrow, winding valley roads, passing through elevated terrain covered in thick forest, lots of passes. It's prime ambush country from Ploesti to Moldavia/Ukraine. If combat operations in Afghanistan from 1979 to the present are any indicator, even heavily defended convoys are extremely vulnerable to attack. And fuel trucks are essentially rolling fire bombs just waiting to be ignited. Blow just one in some kind of natural chokepoint, and the vehicles behind it aren't going anywhere for a while.

And the Romanians are no joke either. If the Soviet, Hungarian, and Bulgarian armies aren't able to pacify central Romania between 12/20/96 and whenever the fuel is shipped out (according to Med Cruise and the Soviet Vehicle Guide, the Romanians are still fighting in late 2000), even the most heavily armed Soviet fuel convoy isn't going to be able to brush the Romanians.

I think it's more likely that most of the fuel is shipped to Ukraine (good point about not having to transport the fuel all the way to Poland, Leg) via the Black Sea, then over land through Ukraine in trucks and/or on trains. By late 1999/early 2000, I doubt that there'd be much left of the Turkish Navy in Black Sea.

Originally Posted by bash

The 5 ID's intelligence isn't likely much faster than the 4th Guard convoy. So they get the intel right before the shooting starts.

True.

[Legbreaker]

This has a lot of good info on the refinery https://www.hydrocarbons-technology....razi-refinery/
Looks like there's a pipeline to the coast for the importation of crude from Kazakhstan, as well as a pipeline from local oil wells.
Page 7 of this http://www.world-petroleum.org/docs/...df/romania.pdf shows the pipelines and page 8 indicates there's two pipelines across the Blacksea (the aforementioned crude imports).

The pipeline label codes for this map are coloured green for oil, red for gas and blue for products, such as gasoline and ethylene.



Some interesting associated links:
https://furcuta.blogspot.com/2009/10...m-history.html
http://research.seenews.com/wp-conte...in-Romania.pdf
https://www.sciencedirect.com/scienc...77705814003257

[StainlessSteelCynic]

Worth mentioning too that Romania has large lignite (AKA brown coal) and bituminous coal reserves.

[ChalkLine]

Originally Posted by Raellus

And the Romanians are no joke either. If the Soviet, Hungarian, and Bulgarian armies aren't able to pacify central Romania between 12/20/96 and whenever the fuel is shipped out (according to Med Cruise and the Soviet Vehicle Guide, the Romanians are still fighting in late 2000), even the most heavily armed Soviet fuel convoy isn't going to be able to brush the Romanians.

That the Romanians go over to NATO when they had an actual real, live Stalinist government is to me one of the funniest parts of the T2K canon.