Chapter 196: Thief

The Siam Branch was bustling with construction, developing its automotive industry.

Meanwhile, the Hongsawaddy Branch had not been idle either.

At the beginning of this year, the Development Group had secretly pulled off something big in Kachin State, in northern Hongsawaddy.

The northwestern border of Kachin State is a relatively gentle mountain range, on the other side of which lies Tianzhu’s Assam State.

In the Nanyun Valley near the border, the local residents had been cleared out and relocated to more livable cities.

After being evacuated, the Nanyun Valley was officially designated a nature reserve on Hongsawaddy’s official website.

And from satellite images, the area did indeed appear to have become a desolate, uninhabited region.

In reality, however, the Development Group had secretly constructed a sizable underground base within the valley, concealed by the Green Umbrella system and subterranean facilities.

The western edge of this base was practically on the border, less than a kilometer away from it.

The reason it was built so close was for the express purpose of stealing something.

The Development Group’s management, combining various current technologies from the Homo Sapiens Company, had devised a uniquely creative plan.

They had discovered that the company’s excavation technology was extremely advanced and its costs were very low. With proper control, even deep underground excavation wouldn’t cause major tremors or noticeable disturbances.

As a result, they set their sights on things in their neighbors’ backyards.

Mang Wenxing, who proposed the idea, personally formed a special project team called "Project Straw," created specifically to devise plans for this theft.

After observing the surrounding neighbors, Mang Wenxing first ruled out the formidable neighbor to the north, then Siam, which had become one of their own, and finally Lancang, which was dirt poor.

In the end, his gaze could only turn westward, toward Tianzhu.

Considering the difficulty of maintaining secrecy on the coast of Rakhine State, he set his target on Assam State along the northwestern border, which just so happened to have what he wanted.

Assam State has a long, narrow River Valley Plain, and within this plain lies a considerable amount of natural gas and oil.

The closest oil field to the Nanyun River Valley was Assam State’s Digboi Oil Field. The surface distance between them was only 47 kilometers, and the underground oil and gas layer was even closer.

According to geological survey data Mang Wenxing had investigated, the oil-bearing layer of the Digboi Oil Field was less than 24 kilometers from the Nanyun River Valley.

Therefore, he pushed the company to build the Nanyun River Valley base.

After a portion of the infrastructure and the underground base was completed, a 1,000-meter-deep well was drilled. Then, from the bottom of the well, they began digging horizontally toward the area beneath the Digboi Oil Field.

Currently, only the Homo Sapiens Company had mastered this kind of deep subterranean horizontal drilling technology.

The key to the technology was using special parasites to carry corrosive bacteria into the deep underground well, then using pheromone regulation to corrode the rock layer in a specific direction.

To increase the excavation speed, they typically used micro-submersibles. These were equipped with a micro-thimble device that could shoot a needle made of cemented carbide into the rock layer, piercing a depth of several dozen meters in a single shot.

Corrosive bacteria were then injected into the resulting channel to accelerate the corrosion process.

At the same time, genetically modified coral polyps could be used to construct a special anti-corrosion coral layer within the underground tunnel.

The mud and sand produced by the corrosion were then flushed directly to the surface via fluid boiling.

The underground tunnel advanced at a rate of two to three hundred meters per day, rapidly approaching the Digboi Oil Field.

After 103 days of secret excavation, the tunnel finally broke through to the oil-bearing layer of the Digboi Oil Field. Just like that, the oil field was acquired by the Development Group.

Because the tunnel was dug diagonally upward from the bottom of the Nanyun River Valley, a natural elevation difference was created between the two locations.

The oil-bearing layer of the Digboi Oil Field is at a depth of 730 to 860 meters, while the bottom of the deep well in the Nanyun River Valley is at 1,000 meters. This meant the oil from the other side would automatically flow toward them.

When the deep well was first dug, a sizable space had been left at the bottom.

Now that they saw the oil beginning to flow over, Mang Wenxing came to the site personally. "How much oil can we pump?"

"Daily output is about 2,600 barrels of crude," the base commander replied with a smile.

"That’s not enough. I recall this oil field has reserves of 32 million tons, correct?"

The base commander nodded. "Yes, the proven reserves are 32 million tons. Below that, there are several hundred million tons of oil sand and oil shale."

A sinister smile appeared on Mang Wenxing’s face. "Then increase the extraction rate. We’re in a race against time with the people from Tianzhu. As long as we drain this oil, they’ll surely have no choice but to temporarily seal the field."

The base commander thought for a moment. "If we increase the number of vacuum pumps and extraction pipelines, we can probably raise the daily limit to 80,000 barrels."

"Do it. Go for the maximum. By the way, what’s the daily transport capacity of the supporting oil pipelines?"

The base commander replied as if listing his own prized possessions, "The daily limit is 100,000 barrels. Additionally, the base’s strategic reserve can store 1 million barrels."

"Expand the reserve, but don’t build it all in one place. Try to establish a 5-million-barrel oil reserve here."

"I’ll draft a plan."

Mang Wenxing listened to the low hum in the pipeline, which sounded like the flowing tide—a symphony in the Vienna Golden Hall to his ears.

Hongsawaddy didn’t have much oil or natural gas, so he had to find a way to "borrow" some from his neighbors.

He knew very well that the series of oil and gas fields in the River Valley Plain of Assam State held at least 200 million tons of oil and over a hundred billion cubic meters of natural gas.

On top of that, there were several hundred million tons of coal and over a billion tons of oil sand and oil shale.

If he could "borrow" all these energy resources, Hongsawaddy’s energy potential would be enhanced even further.

Just as the Nanyun Base was secretly siphoning oil from the Digboi Oil Field, well administrators at the Tianzhu Petroleum Company also noticed that the output of several wells was dropping rapidly.

In his office, the oilfield manager, Sandy, looked troubled after hearing his subordinate’s report. He asked with a headache, "Engineer Mu Li, can we take any remedial measures to restore the wells’ production capacity?"

"If the company can bear a production cost of 40 US Dollars per barrel, then we can use steam-assisted gravity drainage to extract the heavy oil at the bottom," Mu Li replied, his expression saying, ’It’s up to you.’

"40 US Dollars is too high," Sandy said, looking conflicted.

In truth, they weren’t surprised by the decline in well productivity. After all, Tianzhu’s oil consumption had been climbing year after year, and its domestic oil fields were already being pushed to their limits.

Therefore, they didn’t suspect that the oil was simply flowing away on its own.

This was another reason why Mang Wenxing had targeted the Assam State oil fields: they were all on the verge of depletion.

When they eventually ran dry one by one, the people of Tianzhu would just assume they had exhausted the fields themselves.

As for the oil sand and shale oil, Mang Wenxing estimated that Tianzhu currently lacked the technology and capital to extract them.

One had to understand that the place with the world’s largest reserves of oil sand and shale oil wasn’t America, but its little brother, Maple Country. The reserves there were estimated to be equivalent to trillions of tons of oil.

But their extraction costs were also staggering.

Even the oil companies in Europe and America, which had long been involved in shale oil and oil sand, found these two types of deposits difficult to exploit and the costs unacceptable.

For a country like Tianzhu, which lacked the foundational technology, the extraction costs would likely be astronomical. They would be better off just importing oil from their good buddy Lucia.

Therefore, Mang Wenxing had already anticipated their reaction. Once the Assam oil fields began to dry up, the fields in this area would certainly be sealed off one after another.

Then, while they had their wells sealed, he could "help" Tianzhu extract the oil sand and shale oil.

However, this series of oil fields in Assam State had varying stratum elevations and progressively longer distances, which would require further careful planning to map out a safe and covert route.