Deleted member 94680
So Japan can maintain, expand and operate a railway line but can’t lay pipelines or... build huts?
Japan discovers Daqing oil fields in 1935 - how does it change their foreign policy?
- Thread starter M79
- Start date
So Japan can maintain, expand and operate a railway line but can’t lay pipelines or... build huts?
marathag
Banned
Rail and buildings, that's easy.
Pipeline that don't leak, the pumpstations, that's all harder.
Railroad and house tolerances, well a quarter inch is 'close enough'
Not in the oil business.
Deleted member 94680
Why does it have to be far from local industry? Are you seriously suggesting a government can’t build industry? A government (with limited control over a military with no compunctions over the use of slave labour) having identified a strategic resource won’t be able to throw resources at exploitation of that resource to the level private enterprise has managed previously?
You’ve chosen one of the most extreme examples of oil exploration for the time period, ignored the limitations imposed on the exploration efforts and labelled it as some sort of standard. Then, for no particular reason, you’ve decided it was an 100% American effort and demanded that posters prove you wrong. Why?
Deleted member 94680
But I thought building a camp was a limitation the government of Japan would struggle to overcome?
Are you seriously suggesting the Japanese have never built pipelines? Do you understand how ridiculous that sounds?
A country that can build battleships, aeroplanes, tanks, motorcars, trains and even general civilian engineering projects won’t be able to lay a pipeline? Seriously?
marathag
Banned
Most typically, Oil deposits in developed, easy to access areas like Romania and later Austria, were freakishly rare.
Then the cases like the Oil in South California, mostly scrub with few people, more derricks than houses in some areas in 1894.
marathag
Banned
Not can't, won't.
What do they give up, for all that steel that is needed to make pipelines to move Oil, Oil that you can buy on the open market, delivered, at 65 cents a barrel?
Lucius Verus
Banned
Did you attend the Gozen Kaigi (imperial conference) perchance? You show the same casual disregard of logistics and economics that they did
Let's see why Japan went to war:
One of the main reason Japan set itself on the path to war was due to its lack of free press and the elite wanting the benefits of modernity without all the social and institutional changes that comes with it (rule of law, power sharing, free press). Even events that were great for Japan such as the victory over Russia, Washington Naval Treaty and more were presented by the nationalist Japanese press (influenced by its elites) as hideous bullying (despite the fact that it was the Japanese leaders who asked for American mediation in 1905 due to exhaustion and the fact that Japan couldn't possibly hope to match America in a naval arms race so limitations were great). The same leaders who couldn't achieve outlandish ambitions also couldn't take responsibility and with their connections in the press blamed away.
By the 1930s, extreme nationalism and racism was rampant in Japan which when combined with a conscription law that allowed one to purchase exemptions/substitutes meant that the poorest parts of society hardest hit by the great depression now made up the bulk of the army. (silk growing was a major export and lifeline for many poor farmers, especially concentrated in the north. Thing is silk is a luxury product whose demand plummeted during the depression). These were the same men who were treated in a feudal manner by their landlords, complete with intimidation and corporeal abuse, habits they brought with them into the army. To these conscripts liberalism and democracy was the cause of their misery (as opposed to trade, or the deprivations of their semi-feudal elite). This was an army that made corporeal punishment and arbitrary punishments mandatory under the simplistic and naive idea of making them "vicious fighters who would vent their pent-up rage against the enemy ".
Having by now taken on a life of its own, the racism, extreme-nationalism, and propensity for violence political assassinations became common-place and were given a free-hand by the elites which scorned rule of law and civilian government. Eventually it got so bad that the choice was to either have the junior officers killing the civilian government in Japan or starting wars in China, not that the politicians had much choice. Unwilling to obey civilian nor higher military authority, extremely violent, racist, and nationalist were the troops Japan sent to the Asian mainland with disastrous consequences.
Japan didn't choose to go invade Manchuria nor China proper, Japanese officers made their own conquests and the civilian government was left scrambling to come up with excuses like the "Greater Co Prosperity Sphere". Internationally during the political climate of the depression few except for the Americans with its extensive commercial interests cared about China yet the Japanese would inadvertently make fools of everyone who believed their promises of restraint and peace as its officers would launch another invasion in a month or so. Even worse the army consistently committed atrocities against the civilian government galvanizing world opinion against them, even if the Chinese were far away it disgusted people on some base human level to hear of the brutalizing, slaughter, and rape of thousands. It was the same brutality that made collaboration nearly impossible, guaranteeing low-scale warfare and resistance where ever they went.It went even further to direct attacks against Western concessions and forces within China (ie: Panay incident) by the same officers unaccountable to Tokyo.
During this process of undefined and unplanned military expansion it was politically impossible to pull back: The threat of assassination, the sunk-cost fallacy of all the Japanese lives already lost in conquest, the extremely contorted memories of foreign injustices and perceived threats made the prospect of peace improbable. All the while, the wars in China and occupation of Manchuria was never profitable (useful yes, though far from profitable) was slowly bankrupting Japan. Even without the embargoes the Japanese war machine was grinding to a fiscal halt, something they couldn't accept IOTL and hence war since their military was the only assets they had.
An oil supply by the late 1930s, when taking into account the surplus of world supply pre-war and relative cost of imports wouldn't make a dent on a decade of military expenditures, more money would've just meant conquering more useless land full of Chinese partisans. IOTL Japan's attempt to build a refinery on the mainland costed them the equivalent of 2 Yamatos and upon completion severely under-performed due to a lack of technical expertise and equipment-where in the Imperial budget do you get that from? Also, I'm supposed to believe that the same men who stumbled onto the edge of war, who didn't bother building enough tankers and merchantmen for war, who planned on a war based on racist wish-fulfillment, would bother with long-term investments such as oil, pipelines, and refining capacity at a time when oil was dirt cheap and the projects were uneconomical? They didn't build synthetic rubber plants for similar reasons of economics and never saw the need to until it was too late.
The reason Japan went to war was its domestic situation, which after the first assassins were let off with a slap on the wrist became a runaway boulder hurling towards the abyss. Oil won't change that, it won't even make a dent in the national budget nor the climate of politics by assassination.
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Deleted member 94680
But we aren’t talking about Romania Austria or South Carolina. We’re talking about Daqing. The same Daqing that was opened to commerce by the building of a railway 40 years before the PoD.
They can, it just takes time to manufacture and lay. It isn't that Japan can't do it, it is Japan can't do it in less than around a decade. 1935<>2020. Oil development took far more time.
Deleted member 94680
So a country with no oil, who know they have no oil, will not prioritise gaining that oil for the sake of military production designed to gain sources of oil?
Just so I’ve got this straight, you’re now saying they won’t develop the oil because they want to build tanks instead?
marathag
Banned
What you need for local infrastructure is machine shops that supply local industry. The Nations I listed upthread all had companies that could build Automobiles and Locomotives close by. So could areas in SE Manchukuo that developed in the 1930, but not to the degree or as close, more like the relationship (and distance) from the Texas Industry to the new Oklahoma Fields that had Railroads passing thru, but not much local at the time.
marathag
Banned
Are you going to tell the IJA in 1936 that they will.get 50% of rhe Tanks they wanted, so Fuji Heavy Metal gets the steel they want for an pipeline project projected to be finished in 1942?
Sleep lightly, Economics Minister, and pay your bodyguards well.
History Learner
Banned
For further proof on Japan's ability:
One year of surveys, followed by a year of test borings and then first production achieved. Also fun fact: the Fuhshin deposits are near/part of the Liaohe Oil Field....
One year of surveys, followed by a year of test borings and then first production achieved. Also fun fact: the Fuhshin deposits are near/part of the Liaohe Oil Field....
marathag
Banned
Surface deposits typically do not have much capacity. How many barrels a day for the test well? most of the later fields were over 1500-2000' down
Most of that area seems to be shale, so that's v. heavy crude and not easy to get, and probably need fracking to get get the most out of it.
It's no Spindletop, waiting to blow
SsgtC
Banned
Why is December 7, 1941 some kind of drop dead date? Japan discovering a substantial oil fields in territory they control more than 6 years earlier is going to cause massive butterflies for how Japan acts over those 6 years. They won't feel nearly the amount of pressure to seize the "Southern Resource Area" that they felt in OTL. It's doubtful they seize French Indochina which was a preparatory move towards seizing the SRA. That means no embargo. And on top of that, Japan was acutely aware of just how far over a barrel the United States had them in regard to oil. Don't you think Japan would be pouring everything they had into getting that field online and producing oil?
SsgtC
Banned
So your argument is that the Japanese people are too stupid to recognize when a massive strategic windfall slaps them in the face? The Japanese were extremely well aware of their acute lack of oil. And your argument is that, having discovered a secure, nearly uninterpretable oil supply, their reaction is going to be, "meh, big deal. Who needs oil anyway?"
Well, they could always try to hold out the four years for the oil to come online. But is the IJA sane enough to wait.
SsgtC
Banned
IMO, yes. An oil discovery of that magnitude on land that the IJA was instrumental in seizing would be the one thing that could reign them in. Even as insane as the IJA was, even they realised just how important that oil is to Japan. Now after the oil is online, all bets are off. But the IJA will be able to puff out their chests and strut around with a huge feather in their cap while claiming to have "saved Japan from American Imperialism." That leap in prestige may be enough to cool off some of the hotheads
marathag
Banned
Potential massive strategic windfall,at least 5 years away, after hundreds of million Yen spent.
200 hundred more Type 89 Tanks is all that's needed to finish off the KMT, says the IJA in 1937, that's what you are fighting
Germans knew this as well, and hardly did a thing for doing more in Austrian fields
If the Japanese leadership wouldn't have been insane, yes they could wait for that Oil to become available, in 1944 or so.
But I can't see anyone holding back the IJA that long for the new refined Chinese Oil to actually reach the Home Islands.
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Exactly, you can't plan for sanity when dealing with insane states like Nazi Germany or Militarist Japan.