Last time around the proposed CI focus was actually nearly entirely dedicated to new methods for extracting and using natural gas, not oil. I think the trend in fuel markets as well as Bala's increasing internal panic will push a CI focus even farther in that direction than it was 5 years ago. Oil is a lost cause, but we still need a CI focus to try and get off it in favor of gas.
No politically feasible plan target is gonna withstand oil shock. Balakirev's hope is he can make sure its as painless as possible if it happens before he can take higher offices so his career doesn't implode. The man that couldn't manage the CMEA wide effects of oil crisis is not going to advance his carreer and he knows it.
What is the probability that Blackstar is just messing with us and the Oilshock just isn't going to materialise?
We're consuming so much conventional and basic fracking oil that we're approaching critical reserve depletion without the decades of semi-related advancements needed to make heavy fracking and shale oil viable.
That just means we need to drill even harder
What is the "shale experiments" and "massive hydraulic fracturing" that we'd be building with a CI focus? I'm assuming it will include some technical development, is the needed technology just fundamentally unworkable with 1980s computers and material science or something?
We can achieve some gains in the here and now, but there's only so fast you can push the relevant technologies and, critically...
Aside from any meta knowledge about what deposits actually exist as truly extractable with 1980s technology vs. fraud on paper (spoilers: it's a lot of fraud), we can still see an imminent oil crisis coming with purely in-character data. Petroleum fuels demand keeps soaring year-on-year while energy return on investment for oil projects steadily declines, at current trends it will be impossible to extract enough oil to meet demand even if we put all our dice on it within 5 years, or maybe 10 at the hard outside if everything comes up nat 100s.
You can make them run on natural gas instead, this is an actual real thing and to this day some cars will still run on liquefied natural gas. And there our gas is so cheap that experiments in that area are being done just because it's actually interesting cost wise, the USSR is actually developing some tech knowledge in the area already. Hopefully the efforts on this can be expanded some more before the shock comes.
