Rise of the Argentine Empire

General Alvear City, a key investment city for Southern Petroleum, is naturally not as rudimentary as Neuquén City. Moreover, a highly professional oil exploration team is already stationed here.

Saint Hilaire saw the offices leased by Southern Petroleum, looked around, and nodded. The office space, spanning over a thousand square meters, had only a few people working on-site, handling logistics.

"Well, the office area is arranged quite nicely."

The weather in General Alvear City is much colder than in Blanca City.

The population is also relatively small. Two or three-story buildings are rare throughout the city. The most prominent buildings, besides the city hall, are the YPF office buildings.

Currently, General Alvear City has only the state-owned oil company YPF, with no other oil companies present. California Standard Oil Company ultimately exists only as an importer; Perón's negotiations failed.

Besides some familiar faces from Trueno Mining, there are also many exploration employees recruited locally. YPF, as a state-owned company, has also laid off staff, allowing Southern Petroleum to acquire some cheap labor.

Developing an oil industry requires a lot of money, talent, and equipment. Developing a decent oil industry is actually as difficult as building warships or launching satellites.

Saint Hilaire has never been as dedicated as he is to the petrochemical industry. He communicates with Rome daily, and it seems some negotiation results have been achieved with the Fiat family.

This is also the first time he has felt strained. Even the synthetic ammonia fertilizer plant, the La Plata steel plant, the Uruguay iron ore project, the Potash Triangle tobacco industry, and even the arms exports to Southeast Asia, have been quite smooth, mainly because the military stands behind them. But the petrochemical industry is a bit different.

It also involves a huge economic output. In order to secure the oil exploitation rights in Neuquén Province and Chubut Province, Southern Petroleum, besides inheriting the exploitation rights of Trueno Mining, also had to spend a lot of money to bind the two provinces and make some development and construction promises, as well as employment commitments, once oil was actually extracted.

Saint Hilaire doesn't believe in so-called friendship, but he believes that with enough benefits, these local magnates can be won over.

This time, being able to cooperate with Italy's ENI, along with the construction experience of the La Plata steel plant and the already trained steel plant engineering construction team, plus some unemployed people from the Argentine National Oil Company, is why Saint Hilaire dares to do this on such a large scale. At least Argentina currently has some basic oil industry foundation.

From the Argentine National Oil Company's unemployed professional and technical personnel alone, Saint Hilaire has already scoured several hundred technicians to enrich Southern Petroleum's headquarters in Blanca City.

Saint Hilaire has already pushed forward various plans to continue expanding the western industrial zone, the industrial zone left behind by Mayor Otto.

Development is still very backward, and the scale is not enough to cope with such a huge investment.

A big difference between Blanca City and La Plata City is that the steel industry in La Plata City can borrow talent from the capital, Buenos Aires, but Blanca City naturally lacks the conditions to attract talent. After all, Saint Hilaire has only been in this city for a year.

The talent needed for Blanca City to develop the chemical industry cannot be handled by ordinary workers.

Dr. Triston is one of the leaders of Southern Petroleum and also shoulders the most important oil exploration and cooperation projects in General Alvear City.

He is the most important exploration manager besides Juan Nielsen, the president of Southern Petroleum. He used to work for the Mobil Oil exploration team in the United States, with 25 years of outdoor exploration experience, working mostly in Venezuela, Colombia, and Mexico. Juan poached him.

The General Alvear City exploration team is also Southern Petroleum's largest exploration team, with a huge team of more than 100 people.

After Saint Hilaire shook hands with Dr. Triston, he didn't say anything more.

"Boss, the oil exploration environment in Argentina is currently very pessimistic. Our exploration team has discovered a total of 3 oil wells with an estimated reserve of 7 million tons."

"That's far from enough. I hope we can discover more oil fields."

Despite having seen the exploration report on the train, Saint Hilaire still didn't give up, hoping to explore a large oil field with more than 100 million tons.

The Falcon Intelligence Agency's intelligence shows that the state-owned oil company has explored at least 30 million tons of oil reserves in the Patagonia region.

Of course, this has not fully explored Argentina's oil reserve potential.

Exploration is expensive, and drilling is also very expensive. Drilling an oil well currently costs an average of 15,000 US dollars in rich oil and gas gathering areas, and the equipment costs are calculated separately. Saint Hilaire's allocation to General Alvear City has already exceeded 500,000 US dollars, drilling nearly 19 oil wells, but only 3 have produced oil. The Neuquén team was actually very lucky, securing 1 oil well after drilling 4 wells.

Chubut Province is indeed a province with very promising oil reserves, and the exploration results this time are actually relatively optimistic.

"Boss, I actually discovered a very large gathering area, but it's by the sea. Our technology hasn't reached that level yet. I assessed it with Dr. Yuri, a geological expert, and there's at least a large oil field of 200 million tons in the bay."

Triston considered it for a moment before speaking.

"Offshore oil fields don't need to be considered for the time being. Not only is the exploration funding expensive, but the construction cost is also too high. The main focus is still on exploring onshore oil fields."

Saint Hilaire shook his head again. Offshore oil fields are indeed good, but he can't wait until that day. Southern Petroleum would probably go bankrupt.

"You need to grasp the exploration timing here and drill accurately."

He reluctantly twitched the corner of his mouth: "Let's eat first and talk while we eat."

General Alvear City is not far from the Antarctic region, and the seafood restaurants here have a lot of local aquatic products, especially lobster, sea crab, and sea cucumber.

Saint Hilaire saw several fishing boats on the pier, which, unsurprisingly, were produced by Sanhai Shipbuilding.

Diesel and gasoline in General Alvear City are among the lowest-priced areas in Argentina. There is a refinery with an annual output of 500,000 tons, supplying gasoline, diesel, and other petroleum products to the southern region.

"Boss, currently, we are only preparing to exploit onshore oil, right?"

Saint Hilaire was silent for a while: "That's right, that's how it is. Only onshore oil can meet the needs."

He picked up a crab claw and took a bite. The taste was very delicious, salt-baked crab, original flavor.

Saint Hilaire ultimately inspected the oil mining area for 2 days and had to say that the oil quality here was very high, a grade higher than that of Neuquén.

He ultimately decided to increase the oil exploration investment near General Alvear City, investing 1.5 million US dollars for continued exploration and drilling.

Oil is the future of the 20th century, not only considering the automotive industry, but also other products that are needed.

If Argentina can take the opportunity to become an oil exporting country, it can also make a lot of money.

Of course, the most important thing is to develop heavy chemical industries and lay the foundation for future development.

Because some bad news came,

He had to end this inspection early. On June 22, 12 national universities in 8 Argentine cities launched a strike, and the National University of the South was also affected.

The vocational school, which was preparing to open in a few months, was also impacted.

This inspection was somewhat anticlimactic, but the overall situation was still good.

… …

Speaking of oil, diesel, and other products, Saint Hilaire couldn't help but think of one of the most failed investments, the Renes tank factory.

Regarding the Renes Industrial Tank Factory, which has been continuously invested in but has not achieved great development, Saint Hilaire finally clarified their next development goal in his mind: introduce a truck production line, retain the second-generation main battle tank research and development project, but fully shift to the development of civil industry.

Truck production lines are not easy to find, and automobile production lines are also very rare.

Automobile factories are a more difficult goal, but since the motorcycle factory and tractor factory have gradually become profitable, of course, Saint Hilaire is also full of confidence in the truck project.

He took tanks for granted. How many tanks can the Argentine army consume? But trucks are different. Trucks are for civil industry, and with Argentina's economic development, a large number of trucks will definitely be needed.

Through Sequoia Company, Saint Hilaire conducted inspections on several automobile manufacturers, including Ford in the United States, Volkswagen in Germany, Peugeot and Renault in France, Citroen, and Leyland Motors in the United Kingdom, trying to acquire a complete automobile production line.

The British automobile industry was at its peak, and negotiations were very difficult.

The four major American automobile companies, General Motors, Ford Motor Company, Chrysler, and American Motors Corporation, have all been contacted, but there has not been much progress. Ford Motor Company still retains a production line in Argentina, but that is already the T-model production line from 20 years ago, which is completely outdated.

The most impressive thing was the most in-depth negotiation was with the bankrupt American automobile production line, including the currently famous Studebaker automobile company. The factory currently has only one or two thousand people left.

Studebaker faces fierce competition from Ford, General Motors, and Chrysler. In fact, these three companies are engaged in price wars, and Studebaker has been inadvertently affected.

Coupled with increasing labor and production costs, as well as some quality control issues, the once-powerful Studebaker automobile factory began to decline.

Argentina's automobile consumer market has not been fully stimulated.

Of course, in any era, there are many poor people, so Saint Hilaire's consideration of the automobile market starts with cheap cars, vans, and Beetle mini cars are all his goals.

American large fuel-consuming cars will also gradually decline in the future oil crisis, surpassed by Japan and Germany, and the United Kingdom is even more unnecessary to mention.

The economic situation in Europe, America, and Japan in the past two years has not been very good. In addition to the economic crisis, they have been constantly in the adjustment phase, and they are about to enter the second explosive development stage, which is also Argentina's opportunity.