Rise of the Argentine Empire

ENI is still in its initial development stage, and its funds are not abundant. After establishing cooperation, Enrico Mattei had a very positive attitude towards Southern Oil.

He immediately stated that ENI would send a technical team of 200 people to be stationed at Southern Oil to help Argentina establish its own petrochemical industry.

Argentina doesn't have many oil talents. Having 200 foreign aid personnel can speed up the progress.

"Mr. Enrico, I hope that when it is announced to the public, the specific amount of cooperation should be controlled at around 10 million US dollars, not too much."

Juan said finally, Rome is now infiltrated like a sieve, don't be too high-profile, lest the American bastards stir things up.

In fact, the confidentiality work this time was done quite well.

Cooperation between private companies, small refineries, these are two key words. Saint-Jose is now completely starting the mode of making a fortune silently.

It's much lower-key now than it was during the steel project.

Learning from the lessons, many things are kept secret now if possible.

Setting up the steel plant was a bit high-profile, and it was almost successfully attacked by the Americans.

What Saint-Jose didn't tell Juan this time was that he also sent an elite intelligence team to collect reverse intelligence.

Try to conceal cooperation, use falsehoods to confuse the enemy, and release smoke bombs.

The best intelligence work is a mix of truth and falsehood, creating a confusing soup that leads the enemy to misjudge.

"Understood, understood."

As long as cooperation is reached, everything is easy to say.

Although this does not conform to his consistent high-profile principle.

Enrico expressed his understanding of this mysterious Argentine consortium, after all, this is ENI's largest order of the year.

Eight years ago, when the Italian economy was at its most difficult, hundreds of thousands of Italians immigrated to Argentina.

There are many Italian descendants in this negotiation team, and Saint-Jose also played the emotional card.

Juan kept Saint-Jose's teachings in mind, and established a good cooperative relationship with Enrico during the 5-day negotiations that followed.

Saint-Jose attaches great importance to the personal safety of this Italian oil tycoon, and intends to have Juan remind him.

Juan gave Enrico the memorandum of the US Embassy in Rome this year, and subtly reminded him at a banquet that he should pay attention to the CIA's problems.

The ambassador wrote in the memorandum: "In the economic history of Italy, this is the first time that a state-owned company has such good financial solvency, which is entirely due to the outstanding and responsible leader of this company, Enrico."

Although Enrico didn't care much, it was a kind reminder to him.

Praise from the enemy is not necessarily an honor sometimes, but also a life-threatening knife.

The Americans have always been shameless in their actions. A few years ago, in order to prevent Italy from leaning towards the Soviet Union, the CIA spent tens of millions of dollars disrupting the election and supporting the Mafia to cause trouble.

The Italian Communist Party went from being the second largest party in Italy to an opposition party in the opposition.

This cooperation is of great significance to both parties. ENI needs a South American partner, and Southern Oil needs cheap and high-quality oil refining facilities.

This time, Southern Oil only needs to pay a down payment of 15 million US dollars, and the next 33 million US dollars can be paid in installments, and it can also be bartered.

Trade now includes goods such as cloth and tobacco that are relatively scarce in the international market. Argentine specialties such as wheat, beef, food, and flour can all be used as payment offsets. The Italian population is increasing rapidly, and the demand for imported grain is still very large.

This is a win-win cooperation. Blue Cloud Textile, Plarrie Foods, and Future Agriculture's products can enter the Italian market.

With this order, ENI can speed up its development, and it is entirely possible to develop faster and stronger than before.

Southern Oil is in the open, and Rein Military is in the dark.

Enrico introduced several of Rome's most prestigious military industrial families to the Rein Military team. Rein Military also went to Milan and other places to establish cooperation.

With Enrico's recommendation, things progressed very smoothly.

As one of Europe's traditional powers, Italy has always been relatively "low-key" in terms of military industrial development and international arms trade compared to the United Kingdom, France, and Germany. In fact, Italy has a relatively complete military industrial system.

For example, it has very strong capabilities in light weapons, naval guns, and military vehicles, and can produce a full industrial chain from guns to aircraft and artillery.

It is much stronger than Argentina now. Rein Military's later generations used a single explosive hit method, pushing the three axes to the extreme, but did not have sufficient research and development capabilities.

The Italians can do everything.

Intelligence shows that there are about 220 companies in Italy engaged in military industrial production, with more than 60,000 employees.

This does not include the military aircraft manufacturing industry. At its peak, the Italian aircraft manufacturing industry had more than 100,000 employees.

But selling some technology and orders is very popular.

In addition to the military industry, cooperation has also been established in mechanical equipment and other aspects.

Saint-Jose originally wanted to establish nuclear energy cooperation with Italy, but because Blanco's nuclear energy research has entered a bottleneck, he had to give up.

After all, the Italians also developed atomic bombs during World War II, and the progress and results were quite good.

Before World War II, the theoretical achievements of Italian nuclear physicists were among the best in the world.

Now, even a skinny camel is bigger than a horse.

The current Blanca City Nuclear Physics Academy is still developing slowly, and lacks leaders and a group of nuclear physicists. Nuclear physics research is indeed not something that can be done with just hands.

Encore Electric in the United States has only achieved centrifuge development, and is still far from extracting nuclear materials.

Rein Military purchased heavily in Italy. Through technology exchange, the Rein Military team obtained naval guns, artillery, torpedoes, aircraft engine technology, pistol production data, shipbuilding, and other aspects, and established secret cooperation with Beretta, the Beretta family, Fiat, and a large number of other companies.

Rome is heavily infiltrated by the CIA, and the cooperation of the refinery was immediately spread out.

The United States does not think highly of Italy's oil autonomy. The cooperation amount of 10 million US dollars is neither big nor small.

Intentionally concealed, the scale of the refinery has been reduced, mainly oil pipelines. Military industrial cooperation is carried out in secret, mainly some firearms technology.

The CIA only made a record of such private cooperation.

In the eyes of the Americans, Italy is just a surrendered country relying on the Marshall Plan.

The same status as the French.

… …

May 31st evening,

"Mr. Mayor!"

Just as he was looking at the documents, the head of the Falcon Intelligence Agency appeared in the study: "This is the intelligence recently collected by the Falcon Bureau. I am reporting to you. This is some domestic information, and some foreign intelligence."

While speaking, Pusey Kimal stood respectfully beside him, presenting a large envelope.

Pusey was absorbed into the intelligence agency, becoming one of Saint-Hesse's important assistants.

Saint-Hesse opened it and looked at it carefully. There were basically no major events.

"The Battle of Dien Bien Phu is over."

From March to May of this year, the French army was annihilated with over 16,000 casualties, and the French were almost ready to withdraw their troops.

Saint-Hesse already knew this result and could only say that the era of great colonialism was over.

"IBM has developed a transistor computer." This was a commercial intelligence from the United States.

The prelude to the computer age.

The rest were all minor matters. Domestically, Córdoba secretly organized an army, planning to overthrow Perón by force.

Saint-Hesse discovered that many Argentinians had learned the essence of the Italians and Spaniards, and their procrastination was quite serious.

Even their rebellion was delayed. He thought they could settle the rebellion in the first half of the year, but Perón was still doing well.

He knew that Córdoba was preparing to cause trouble two years ago, and they still haven't settled it.

"Recently, the number of illegal immigrants from countries such as Chile and Peru has reached 12,000. They are engaged in some new jobs here, especially in small clothing factories and hardware factories. The immigration bureau is requesting strict investigations and repatriation."

Saint-Hesse looked at the population data from last month. On the one hand, the Argentine Immigration Bureau was controlling illegal immigration, and on the other hand, the Blanca City Hall ostensibly did not encourage illegal immigration, but Blanca City was extremely short of people.

This forced them to use delaying tactics and concealment.

The people from several cities around Blanca City were not enough for Blanca City to use.

And the level of Peru, Chile, and other countries is about 2/3 lower than Argentina.

Working illegally is a common need for neighboring countries.

With the cover of the Southern Naval Military Region, Saint-Hesse's international passenger liners transported immigrants openly.

Saint-Hesse had secretly become Argentina's largest smuggler.

He arranged smuggling routes in several surrounding countries, encouraging the establishment of smuggling corridors in the Andes Mountains.

The Presidential Palace has repeatedly issued decrees to strictly control the entry of illegal immigrants, prohibit them from working, take measures to deport illegal immigrants and immigrants who endanger social order, and at the same time, increase the penalties for employers who hire illegal immigrants.

"After all, there are still too few people. Increase the protection of immigrants, try to regularize and legalize them. There are still 40 factories to be opened in the spring, requiring at least hundreds of thousands of workers. Encourage the legalization and regularization of immigrants."

Saint-Hesse said to himself. The population and talent are not keeping up. In fact, there are also some talents in neighboring Chile and Peru. It would be great if they could be integrated into Argentina.

He treated the Presidential Palace's ban as wind in his ears. He thought there were too few people, so why would he repatriate any immigrants?

Moreover, those newly established small factories also needed people to work, and international black labor was a very good labor force.

He turned a blind eye to their employment of illegal workers.

Blanca City caught up with a good time this year. The European textile industry was affected by the economic crisis. During Saint-Hesse's tenure as deputy mayor, he introduced a textile industry support plan, which has now grown rapidly, attracting more than 10,000 jobs and developing export textile and garment industries. There are still several large factories to be put into production.

Where would the regular labor force be enough? Moreover, Saint-Hesse's factories wanted older women who had given birth to several children, and the local women who had just married were well protected.

Therefore, the introduction of foreign workers increased.

In addition, Saint-Hesse also supported wood processing, furniture manufacturing, papermaking, and other industries. Saint-Hesse himself was not interested in entering these industries, but they could increase Blanca City's industrial strength and employment.

These industries have certain development advantages, but the factories are not large, and the locals are not very willing to go to work, which has created a large job market.

Moreover, the abundant resources in the surrounding area can be fully developed.

The shipyard alone needs thousands of skilled workers, not to mention other industries. It was not a headache when producing fishing boats, but this time it was producing 20,000-ton bulk carriers.

Many high-quality talents are needed. Shipbuilding is not that simple. Argentina's own education level is not as good as Spain and Italy, so introducing talents from other countries is also the fastest way.

And more high-end industries, such as the 200,000-ton synthetic ammonia and 300,000-ton urea plants introduced from Germany, have a total investment scale of more than 20 million US dollars. The equipment debugging alone will take more than a year, and thousands of workers are needed here.

The Blanca City Thermal Power Plant, located in the eastern district of Blanca City, needs to build a 50,000-ton dedicated coal unloading wharf and a dedicated highway, using the most advanced technology, as well as three 600,000-kilowatt power generation units to meet the city's industrial electricity needs.

The Sanhai Shipyard, in cooperation with the Spaniards, built a 20,000-ton dock that is under construction, which is far from meeting the needs of the explosive international trade.

Saint-Hesse hopes to complete the construction of 30,000-ton or even 50,000-ton freighters. Now the volume of maritime trade is increasing dramatically, and the capacity of 20,000-ton ocean-going freighters can no longer meet the needs very well. There is a shortage of a large amount of capacity every month.

The Plarrie International Fleet currently has more than 70 ships of its own as of May, with a total tonnage exceeding 800,000 deadweight tons.

This is not even a fraction of Japan's international shipping capacity. Japan's post-war development was so fast, and the tens of millions of tons of shipping capacity were extremely important.

Plarrie International uses its cooperation with banks to lease out its ships and develop rapidly.

It's just that there are still too few factories in Argentina participating in the international division of labor, and most of the imported coal and other mineral resources are mainly used to meet domestic needs.

The bulk of exports are still light industrial products, and arms mainly rely on smuggling.

This is not presentable.

Now Plarrie International has 40 coal carriers, transporting coal needed by coal-fired power plants. In the past year, it has transported 6 million tons of coal to the La Plata Steel Plant and 2 million tons to the La Plata Thermal Power Plant.

Saint-Hesse estimates that 1.5 million deadweight tons are needed to barely meet the needs. Under the stimulation of the Plarrie fleet's orders, the construction speed of the Sanhai Shipyard's dock has been much faster.

International trade requires a lot of resources, and the scale of trade is still not large enough.

Blanca City is still continuing to develop, and the weather is much colder than before.

After Saint-Hesse organized a regular meeting at the City Hall, he went to the shipyard to check the construction progress.

The shipyard needs to renovate, maintain, and repair warships.

Need to continue to work hard.

This time, Saint-Hesse also asked Rhein Armaments to get some cooperation from Italian shipyards.

Although the Italian Navy's territory is only the Mediterranean Sea, there are still certain things to learn in warship manufacturing.

Saint-Hesse saw the Sanhai Shipyard's dock.

The towed-back battleship is parked in the bay, waiting for the shipyard to be completed.