Oil in T2k

[Legbreaker]

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]

How'd They Do That

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 Krak3w 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]

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]

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.

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.

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/romanian-petroleum-history.html

http://research.seenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/Oil-Refineries-in-Romania.pdf

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1877705814003257

[StainlessSteelCynic]

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

[ChalkLine]

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.