But a general breakdown in global order could do a lot to provoke a breakdown in this kind of norm (respecting the ownership rights of someone who lives on the other side of the world, and who may be a corporation that nominally 'exists' in a collapsing country itself). And it wouldn't take many such breakdowns before people got very fucking careful about what nations they sent their ships to, for fear that the ships wouldn't come back.
Huh... That makes me think.
Imagine a scenario, it is the collapse, the US is in the midst of civil war. The collapse of trust in the dollar-based economy has utterly fragged the international finance system. Any company with international reach is likely to be in critical condition (and most are likely to fail) - so might we see entire fleets worth of ships being seized by port authorities in lieu of debts? Unpaid and starving crews mutinying and capturing their ships to sell them off to local operators? The formation of pirate trawler and merchant fleets of negotiable virtue as port cities that have decent oil stocks and parts inventories end up turning into pirate free cities?
he who controls "the Queen of Silver" controls not only Argentina but now has significant sway over Uraguay and southern Brazil, as their rivers are just branches of the la Plata. Especially in the case of Brazil, with its god-awful geography, it's far cheaper to use the river to transport their goods - agricultural and mineral - down the river into the sea than trying to trek overland, despite the fact that this puts the beating heart of Brazil's economy through Argentina's capital.
Hmmm. I wonder... If we go with the proposed Brazilian collapse, might the parts of Brazil most integrated with the La Plata region form a separate Argentine-aligned entity?
From the looks of it, basically everyone who doesn't have enough local oil production jumping on Venezuela and helping in an effort to ensure that they get just enough to keep everything working as Alex goes on a 'tour' through the Middle East. Europe, China, Australasia, the rest of South America...
America's oil is gone. Russia's oil comes with enough problems that you want to go elsewhere if you can and it's unlikely to be cheaper than what you get even after helping keep the oil flowing from the alternate source. The Middle East is either burning, dying, tearing themselves to shreds for food and water or helping Russia get a monopoly on global oil. China is probably grabbing every bit of oil it can get because it's internal production isn't anywhere near enough. Canada's production died along with America's. Mexico is a very similar story. Nigeria and Angola are... It's yet to be determined if those two nations are still producing or if they were some of the parts of Africa that collapsed during the Collapse and aftermath. Norway likely grabbed every bit of the UK's production it could get a hold of, and the unified production capacity is the only thing keeping Europe partially working. India would be similar to China in that it's desperately keeping it's internal production for itself and looking for more. Though has the advantage there of being someone the Tsar wants as a friend so it can meet it's needs with Tsarist-aligned oil.
And that's basically all the nations with more than a billion barrels produced a year. Toss in Indonesia, Malaysia, Columbia and Argentina and you're apparently under 750 million barrels a year. Which is when the amount starts dropping real fast for each different nation. We already know that Indonesia is a mess of revolts even in the 'modern' day so that disrupts the oil production there. We know that Indonesia swallowed up Malaysian Borneo during the Collapse and the aftermath, so Malaysia's production is likely shot, even before the independence movement starts sabotaging everything. Columbia and Argentina...
It really depends on how their situation turns out as to what happens there, but considering that they don't meet Venezuela's production together? Less likely to be the focus on emergency expanded oil production for foreign needs. They probably found Alex's 'Message' in Venezuela very informative about any ideas revolving around oil, and I wouldn't be surprised to find that they were part of the reason Alex was quite so vigorous in dealing with Venezuela.
Well... Oil in the ground is one thing. But at this point, extracting oil from anywhere is extremely capital/technology-intensive. Slurping the last tarry residues out of mature oil fields isn't so different from fracking or exploiting tar sands. Last I read into this, US-based companies are a key players in maintaining the output every oil field still in production - US sanctions on Russia, Venezuela and Iran have basically destroyed the output of all 3, and the implosion of the US during the collapse is basically going to mean that all the world gets to experience the practical ramifications of that sort of sanctions regime.
Especially since Western Europe, Japan and China, which are the likely players who could fill the gap, are all very connected to the US oil industry and oil finance sector, so will lose much capability when the US is busy destroying itself.
And while I am sure Western Europe and China could rebuild capabilities and add new capabilities to their oil industries in time, do they have time to fill the gaps left by destroyed US firms? Both are scheduled to experience their own existential crises and so much is going to be on fire after the US implodes that they will probably be busy with more important challenges to their existence than keeping oil flowing at anything near the rates of today. What's really key is bunker oil for ships and gasoline and diesel for logistical transport. Oil we now use for electrical generation, moving personal vehicles around, plastic production and asphalt production is likely to be very far down the list of priorities.
So practically, that leaves Japan, whose oil industry in the here-and-now is struggling to reach targets for developing overseas resources that can then be imported to Japan (and a big chunk of Japanese developments are in North America), so even though Japan is one of the powers that did well during the collapse, it has no-where near the scale for their oil service industry to support all the fields and refineries and transport infrastructure that currently relies on US oil service firms.
(I don't mention Russia at all, because their oil industry isn't even up to maintaining domestic production.)
I expect that the collapse will see simultaneous contractions in BOTH supply and demand - likely very large contractions. And after things stop being on fire all the time, will rebuilding of the 20th Century way of doing things be desirable? I am doubtful, given both the large capital costs of rebuilding the high-intensity oil economies of the here-and-now and that alternative technologies and infrastructures are likely to have continued to develop, at least in places like Russia and Japan, where the collapse doesn't hit as hard.
Maybe the whole reason why Russia and Japan are allies in this future is that Russia had secure oil fields and Japan had the ability to help them maintain production? And the reason for their military power is because they've been the only powers for 40 years who had enough oil to invest in military logistics and mobility?
fasquardon