We will get options to prevent that iirc. Basically offshore drilling on previously flooded well heads lol
OK... So we'll have to pay twice (once to flood the area, second time to drill new wells) to get a little less production than we already have (capping wells and re-drilling them in inherently a wasteful process). Well, fine. But can we rebuild our existing oil production while keeping production expanding for the next 5 years or so?
Certainly if we do opt for modified river reversal, I think we really should go for a petrochemical revolution off the back of our plastics crit and do a CI/Services plan next. Plan to spend most of our budget on new production and better technology while packing people into services jobs to ride out the oil crash and our own river reversal...
The thought process is that if Balas position is already bad, then losing him with the comitee isnt that big of a loss cause we can put both the plan failure and river reversal on him as the scape goat.
Exactly. Instead of wasting opportunities trying to hold on to a weak political hand, we roll with the punch.
Yeah thats what i mean, if we are sinking giant amounts of petroleum into river reversals, then that will make the oil shock hit harder, so focusing on building oil processing industries like plastics would be very dangerous.
Cool. The way you put it, I wasn't sure if you'd read it right. I know I occasionally misread price rises since I am still used to the old system.
Though I am not sure that expanding plastic production is so bad, so long as we improve production of oil or improve efficiency of refining at the same time. Plastic isn't made out of the oil fractions that are used as petrol or diesel. So I am more and more thinking that a big petrochemicals push might be wise. Make existing wells and refineries more efficient, drill more, build more plastic factories to use the waste as we produce lots of fuel oils ready for the crisis.
What? No, the opposite is true, if we are already in a political struggle, as we are likely to be, we do not want to piss against the political wind if we want to keep Balakirev and his much bigger bonus to all dice.
We've already had plenty of examples this quest of how higher dice boni are worse than making wrong strategic choices.
Like the way we stuck with Voz for too long.
And I would not be unhappy with a minister who was a pawn of Semynov or Ryzhkov. I'd prefer Semynov putting a Trade Unionist minister in place, especially with the pressure that the oil crisis will put on the ordinary worker, but Ryzhkov is OK.
Also, having someone with better political chops, even if he wasn't great at the rest of the job, could be useful in an oil crisis. Many of the critical rolls during the crisis are sure to be fights in the SupSov.
We, uh, have a not insignificant chance of having the oil crisis come right this turn and are going into plan turning, having a decapitated ministry with no head, no deputy and Semyonov and Ryzkov locked in a power struggle over it would not exactly be ideal. Especially since Balakirev is the one dude who knows we are heading towards a energy cliff and is the one who can best adress it. Like, I understand throwing it to committee, but I think the consequences of Balakirev getting yeeted out at this point could be pretty disastrous so I really wish that doesn't happen.
Political instability right as the crisis hit would be bad, for sure.
On the other hand, I do think that people are seriously over-valuing Balakirev's authorship of that report. Klimenko committed the ministry to nuking the Soviet economy out of the coal and oil crunch. Once an oil crisis actually occurs, even if Balakirev is out, the momentum of the Balakirev report will continue.
And we might end up with someone who can act on the Balakirev report better than Balakirev can. Bala has engineer brain almost as bad as Voz did (albeit he's also more chill politically).
Like, I get the temptation to not risk opening the mystery box. We opened the mystery box during the Libyan crisis and now there's an Algerian genocide going on. But the "safe" option is a staggeringly expensive megaproject. (Though better a staggering expensive megaproject than a staggeringly expensive public health crisis.) And the costs of the river reversal are enough that I suspect that we have the risk of a quick political death if we roll badly in the committee, or a slow political death as we try and make the blasted thing work. Even if we can compensate for all the downsides of the river reversal itself, it will be taking up resources and organizational bandwidth that I would rather have free to deal with the oil crisis in a robust way.
Remember, it being so late in a richer and more developed world means that it is very likely to be FAR worse than the oil crisis of OTL.
And on top of that, if we go to committee there's the chance that we roll well we could get good things.
We have in the past gotten good things from making the right choice after a critfail.
Regards,
fasquardon
