WI: Scorched Earth Policy for Pacific Petroleum Infrastructure

Delta Force

Banned
Imperial Japan started World War II partially to seize control of petroleum fields by force. What if the Allies had decided to enact a scorched earth policy for Pacific petroleum infrastructure at risk of capture? It would deprive the Japanese of a vital resource and force them to expend critical resources restoring capacity, and it would cause minimal impact to the Allies after the war due to the less constrained petroleum markets of the time. As late as the 1950s there was enough supply that the West was able to embargo Iranian petroleum without causing an energy crisis.
 

Ian_W

Banned
Imperial Japan started World War II partially to seize control of petroleum fields by force. What if the Allies had decided to enact a scorched earth policy for Pacific petroleum infrastructure at risk of capture? It would deprive the Japanese of a vital resource and force them to expend critical resources restoring capacity, and it would cause minimal impact to the Allies after the war due to the less constrained petroleum markets of the time. As late as the 1950s there was enough supply that the West was able to embargo Iranian petroleum without causing an energy crisis.

This was done.

Look at this, for example - http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/2574023

Similarly, the Japanese murdered many Dutch civilians after the destruction of oil facilities at Palembang.

That said, if you have an existing oil field, it's difficult to keep it permanently out of production - new wells can always be re-drilled, new water handling facilities, new refineries built and so on. It may not do it as well as the old one, but it will do it.

This, however, is assuming you arent fighting incompetent chucklefucks.

The actual, OTL, Japanese state forgot to build up an oil drilling and refining capability as part of their 'Strike South' effort.

East Timor, for example, has oil seeps near the surface. During the Japanese occupation, the Japanese decided to ignore this three-thousand year old Chinese invention of the "oil well" and decided to dig pits instead.

They might have got 100 barrels a day from it.

http://assets.geoexpro.com/legacy-files/articles/East Timor Surrounded by Hydrocarbons.pdf

Similarly, they tried to use light crudes directly into power plants. Who could have guessed sulfer would be a problem ?

http://www.combinedfleet.com/BorneoOil.htm

A better question would have been 'What if the Japanese had shown a basic level of competence and assumed the Allies would destroy the oil facilities, and concentrated between 1936 and 1941 in developing a capability to drill wells, handle water and refine oil'.
 

Delta Force

Banned
What if the British and Dutch had started petroleum well fires? Since Imperial Japan had so little experience developing petroleum fields to begin with, having to extinguish fires could cause further delays.
 

Ian_W

Banned
What if the British and Dutch had started petroleum well fires? Since Imperial Japan had so little experience developing petroleum fields to begin with, having to extinguish fires could cause further delays.

If you are really really lucky, you find a field where pure oil wants to come out of the ground by itself.

Even if that happens, almost inevitably, after an initual flush of production lasting months, the well settles down into a mix of oil and water that needs to be pumped.

You can see the problem with setting fire to wells.

A related problem is how the air gets to the fire once the pump isnt working.

Refineries, set on fire quite well. Indeed, having them not do this is the big challenge with running a refinery :)

A better solution for wells involves merely dropping a small explosive charge down each well, to crack the casing and make the well impossible to pump, untll it is redrilled and has new casing installed.

Alternatively, if you're short of explosives, a new concrete plug can be poured in, and once it hardens it will need to be drilled out.

The Allies did both these things.

In any case, the Allies did a good to decent job on crippling the fields and the refining capability, as all the IJN efforts to use crude oil where refined was needed shows.
 
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