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Attempting to Fulfill the Plan MNKh Edition

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Oil crisis is actually good.
Shock them old fogy (those we don't like) out of bad mentality (purge).
Create incentive for new energy conservation and generation tech.
May even make the American more amicable to us as well.
As long as it is manageable, which I am confident we can, it can only benefit us in the long run.
Some (a lot) of our comrade may be badly affected, but it is a price I am willing to make.
I put my trust in the Soviet Union and the Ministry 🤞
 
fasquardon said:
It'll add up, though I am alot more worried about all the freon in their refrigerant loops.

With us and the USA rushing for maximum air conditioning, the ozone layer will be getting utterly hammered.
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Apparently, the switchover to transition from CFCs should only require a extremely cheap, low progress project. So as soon as it becomes seen as a problem, we can deal with it pretty decisively. There is a reason it happened irl, the economics favored that transition thankfully.
fasquardon said:
On the other hand, the odds that we will get an oil crisis over the next plan are much higher. If running even hotter than we are now means we're better prepared for global energy crunch time, it might be worth doing. Especially as we can blame the oil crisis for the crisis when the overheated economy crashes.

Of course, if running even hotter isn't needed for preparing, we shouldn't do it.

It's gonna be interesting to see how it goes when it comes. I am expecting it to be a fair bit worse than the OTL oil crises. Will be especially challenging helping our allies survive it.

Depending on who is in power in the US and thus who gets blamed, it could have interesting effects on the Cold War too.
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I think a high investment plan would be a bit counterproductive, higher inflation and internal demand for petrochemicals and fuels would make it more difficult to manage things when all of CMEA would be struggling.

The main way we will manage this is by pouring investments into CI, using Balakirev's personal focus to get more bang for our buck. We will likely have to make compromise with less resources to throw aroune, but dems the breaks unfortunately.

Thankfully, we are able to begin adressing this now. We are no longer wastefully burning fuel oil, and will soon be able to crack it. Dedicated gas projects will become available, and Saratov finished successfully before unfavorable leadership changes in the US.
 
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The issue with that is twofold. First is that we (as in CMEA generally) would likely need to compete with the Western Europeans and Americans on the world market no matter what, so prices would be an issue. Like, if the price of oil triples or quadruples in the oil market it would be foolish of them to sell it for less than that.

The second, is that despite both Libya and Indonesia being OPEC members, they have relatively small production rates. Roughly around 1 million barrels of oil a day each. That is nothing compared to ours of around 12 million if we go by OTL or Saudi Arabia's 7 million. We can't really escape the price of international oil's internal effects.
 
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Vi'Talzin said:
The second, is that despite both Libya and Indonesia being OPEC members, they have relatively small production rates. Roughly around 1 million barrels of oil a day each.
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Well, Libya can do better - it hit ~3.5 million back in the 1970. If CMEA markets offered it consistent high demand and access to semi-modern tooling and expertise, I can see it maintaining or perhaps even expanding these numbers, unlike OTL.
 
agumentic said:
Well, Libya can do better - it hit ~3.5 million back in the 1970. If CMEA markets offered it consistent high demand and access to semi-modern tooling and expertise, I can see it maintaining or perhaps even expanding these numbers, unlike OTL.
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It is possible we might be able to negotiate sweetheart investment-for-oil deals (basically, cheap loans, capital goods and provision of experts in return for fixed price contracts for oil), I think a few of those happened back in the 70s, but that will just ease the pressure slightly, not entirely relieve it.

Traveller76 said:
Maybe we can import oil from Indonesia or our African friends?
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We likely will be able to, but alot of the other producers who are friendly are either smaller producers who will stay small producers, or small producers who we would need to invest in heavily to build their production up.

For example, a fully spooled-up Libya, Nigeria and Angola would together produce about half what the OTL USSR did in 1980.

Likely what we'd be doing with investing in allied oil producers is spooling them up while extracting more oil ourselves over the crisis, so that after the crisis we have that production coming on-line elsewhere making up for the degradation of our own reserves and covering the ever rising demand as our allies grow their economies.

Vi'Talzin said:
I think a high investment plan would be a bit counterproductive, higher inflation and internal demand for petrochemicals and fuels would make it more difficult to manage things when all of CMEA would be struggling.

The main way we will manage this is by pouring investments into CI, using Balakirev's personal focus to get more bang for our buck. We will likely have to make compromise with less resources to throw aroune, but dems the breaks unfortunately.

Thankfully, we are able to begin adressing this now. We are no longer wastefully burning fuel oil, and will soon be able to crack it. Dedicated gas projects will become available, and Saratov finished successfully before unfavorable leadership changes in the US.
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I am sure those things, plus building out more nuclear reactors can keep things sufficiently on course in the USSR, but will they be enough to support our allies adequately?

I admit, I don't have a clear sense of what our CMEA allies and our non-CMEA allies need, so maybe there's not much we can do, or maybe their needs aren't as large as my gut says they will be.

And it is quite possible that the best thing we can do is go for the coolest economy we can going into the next plan. Especially as the path towards the Euro will be transmitting our inflationary pressure to our CMEA allies with ever more efficiency the closer we get to full integration...

Ashheap said:
Oil crisis is actually good.
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It could be good, yes. Certainly we can't continue being as raw material inefficient as we are currently...

We'll have to see.

Vi'Talzin said:
Huh, you're right, they did. That's nice, though well, the bit about demand still applies in this case. I doubt Gaddafi will sell Red Europe ten dollars a barrel when the price is forty.
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Hmm, does anyone accept roubles for oil? Or is it only dollars for oil as it was in OTL?

If Gaddafi (is Gaddafi actually in power in Libya in TTL?) accepts 40 roubles for a barrel instead of ten, it would be much better for us and our allies than if we somehow had to obtain dollars to buy Libyan oil.

Regards,

fasquardon
 
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fasquardon said:
So according to this China can generate 8,882 billion KWh, which is an odd way to count TWh, but it is an American source, and the US a little less than half of that in 2022. So us producing over a thousand TWh is... At least 1/8th of a modern China? According to the same source, the US in 1980 generated 2,290 TWh.


So already 500 TWh more than the OTL Soviet Union in 1980... A respectable number, but less than I feared. (I say feared because I've been a bit worried that we've been extremely inefficient at turning raw resources into quality of life improvements...)

That makes me wonder if the numbers for the US includes things like the hydro in the Pacific Northwest that was purely used for industry.
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Given our population is lucky to be one-third of 2022 West Taiwan, I do not think we could ever reach their power consumption. We're still below them per-capita even, but we are right on the heels of in-game present day USA and likely to pass them. By 1980 we'll probably have another TWh/year installed.

Anyways some fun maths: Our coal power plants generate 40 electricity for every point they drive up coal price, Kansk-Achinsk consumes 4.5 electricity for every point it drives price down. That looks like an EROI of less than 10:1, which is already poor for fossil fuels. And that's WITH the cool supercritical cycle plants we just got.
 
The real danger to an extent is probably more that an OPEC equivalent will eventually form to put the squeeze on their captive audience. If or perhaps rather when that forms, that will probably be 'fun' politically.
 
General_Urist said:
Given our population is lucky to be one-third of 2022 West Taiwan, I do not think we could ever reach their power consumption. We're still below them per-capita even, but we are right on the heels of in-game present day USA and likely to pass them. By 1980 we'll probably have another TWh/year installed.
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Ah, but that's because you haven't accounted for the mid-2000s referenda for the euro states to become new SSRs.
 
MSH said:
Ah, but that's because you haven't accounted for the mid-2000s referenda for the euro states to become new SSRs.
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Hah! There's a few of our allies who might be happy enough as allies, but who would fight to the death to resist being ruled from Moscow...

I don't expect we'll be anywhere near to a federal Europe, even in 50 years.

Well... Maybe if we took inspiration from Mack Reynolds and let the Hungarians run everything. Our CMEA allies might be so shocked by us letting the Soviet Union take orders from Budapest that they might stumble into letting Budapest give them orders too.

Quickshot0 said:
The real danger to an extent is probably more that an OPEC equivalent will eventually form to put the squeeze on their captive audience. If or perhaps rather when that forms, that will probably be 'fun' politically.
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I thought we already had an OPEC equivalent form a few years ago?

Anyway, something like OPEC just existing isn't going to cause a crisis. In OTL, OPEC started the oil squeeze because of Western support for Israel and food imports from the US rising sharply due to the economic strain of the Vietnam War and the Apollo program... So far the US economy has been more stable due to a lack of both the big stressors and the Levantine Republic has kept the peace in the Holy Land.

Or to put it another way, peak oil in the continental US, the strained American finances and the existence of OPEC were tinder, but for the tinder to turn into a raging crisis, a match was needed. Same will be true of our oil crisis when it arrives. The accumulated tinder will inevitably get lit on fire by something, we're just getting lucky and avoiding matches so far...

Regards,

fasquardon
 
fasquardon said:
Anyway, something like OPEC just existing isn't going to cause a crisis. In OTL, OPEC started the oil squeeze
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I was thinking more that they'd cause oil prices to go higher over time. The squeeze I thus meant was as such more that they'd be squeezing more money out of their captive consumers. It's what they did OTL as well after all.

The main concern here is as such that it ends the era of cheap energy, which would be a political issue.

Well the obvious solution is to find ways to reduce oil needs of course, but that will take some time.
 
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Cannon Omake: A Soviet-Japanese friendship: the case of Nikita Semyonovich Ryzhov and Matsuo Seiichi
  • Sidestory
    • Here is a new omake of my own called "A Soviet-Japanese friendship: the case of Nikita Semyonovich Ryzhov and Matsuo Seiichi". I hope you will like it despite my limited poetic skills.

    At first glance, the working relationships within the Ministry during Nikolai Voznesensky's time might appear to be nothing more than cold technocrats obsessed with figures and economic indicators, but this would be misleading, as it was also the occasion for the establishment of beautiful interpersonal relationships, as was the case between Nikita Semyonovich Ryzhov - then Minister of Light and Chemical Industry - and Japanese engineer Matsuo Seiichi, as demonstrated by their abundant epistolary correspondence.

    The sustained epistolary relationship between Matsuo Seiichi and Nikita Semyonovich Ryzhov began when they met by chance in the Ministry's Moscow offices, following the latter's invitation to the Japanese-Soviet Economic Committee to deepen Soviet-Japanese relations in the field of joint ventures and energy exchanges between the two nations. Indeed, this committee was set up in 1962 to study joint-venture possibilities concerning the North Sakhalin project, the development of West Siberian oil and gas fields, pipeline construction, the development of Soviet copper deposits, a pulp mill project and other projects.

    The Bilateral Economic Committee is essentially made up of the top Japanese leaders of the Federation of Economic Organizations (Keidanren). Matsuo Seiichi was a member of this committee as a technical advisor in the field of oil drilling and pipeline laying. It should also be noted that the Japanese government is not directly involved, but provides information and advice. The Soviet equivalent includes senior officials from the ministries responsible for commercial and industrial development in Siberia.

    This committee is the embodiment of a convergence of interests between the Soviet Union and Japan. Indeed, for Japan, it was a question of diversifying its sources of supply in the face of its heavy dependence on imported raw materials and fuels. At a time when raw materials are scarce and prices are rising rapidly, Japan finds itself among the most dependent of the Western industrial powers in terms of raw material imports, and is therefore seeking to diversify its sources of supply. A few examples illustrate this dependence: Japan imports 99.7% of its oil, 73.6% of its natural gas, 100% of its aluminum, nickel and uranium, and 86% of its coking coal. For the Soviet Union, it was a question of benefiting from the influx of Western capital and technology to further develop its economy in general, while reinforcing the economic and development value of Siberia.    ​

    From 1962 to 1969, Japan signed three agreements with the Soviet Union: the Timber Agreement, the Agreement on the Development of the Port of Vrangel and the Agreement on Pulp Production.

    It was with this backdrop of beneficial bilateral relations that Ryzhov and the 32-year-old engineer from the ITACHU oil company met at the aforementioned reception. During the reception, they exchanged views on a wide range of topics, from the historical role of technology in the development of civilizations to the evolution of technical standards in the Japanese automotive industry.

    Thus, this meeting was the fruit of both interpersonal and geopolitical circumstances. After these long hours of exchange and Seiichi's return to Japan, they began a fruitful epistolary correspondence that would not end until Ryzhov's death on October 5, 1989, after several hundred letters had been exchanged.

    On the occasion of his friend's death, Seiichi composed this haiku as a tribute to him:

    A burning vision

    extinguished by tears

    will light up again

    Excerpts from "The burning torch of Soviet technocracy: the MNKH under Nikolai Voznesensky (1957-1964)" (1995) by Jonas Strasburg.    ​
     
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  • Sidestory
    • Manowl said:
    Now for some reason I'm imagining that a Japanese mech show in this timeline has a soviet sidekick that has a crab mech abomination that barely works?
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    It has to have a crotch chainsaw as well! And rocket fists! Got to keep all those rocket engineers busy after ground launched nuclear salt water rockets make everything else irrelevant as all the plutonium produced in our civilian reactors make fissile material too cheap to meter.

    Said ground launches will also finally solve the invasive catfish problem in a triumph of Soviet engineering over the mistakes of nature.

    Regards,

    fasquardon
     
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