1627 Rise of the South China Sea

Chapter 3649

Although the voyage to visit the Special Operations Division was long, there were many places worth visiting along the way. The first was the Dumai Oil Field, located in the Strait of Malacca, 500 miles west of Sing Tao Island.

Dong Shangyi was both familiar and unfamiliar with oil fields. He was familiar with them because the Chuxiongkeng Oilfield, which is still being mined, was located on Taiwan Island, just over 300 miles away from Fujian.

As an extremely important industrial resource, the Executive Committee has always attached great importance to petroleum. It has invested a lot of resources in the Chuxiongkeng Oilfield and built supporting petrochemical industries. As a result, the area has become the most important industrial center on the island of Taiwan.

The reason for this unfamiliarity is that the extraction, refining and use of oil are completely advanced technologies that are beyond the times for ordinary people, and Dong Shangyi is no exception. In addition, due to the special relationship between Taiwan and Fujian, he basically has no chance to visit the oil fields on site, and can only learn limited information through some intelligence channels.

However, Dong Shangyi did have some experience using products from the petrochemical industry. The kerosene added to his favorite windproof oil lamp and the lighter he carried with him was said to be an extract from petroleum.

Dong Shangyi had heard that fuel refined from petroleum could be used in a more advanced mechanical equipment than a steam engine, creating more powerful power that could give people the ability to go to heaven and earth. He believed that this was probably one of the reasons why the Executive Committee attached great importance to oil extraction.

The Chuxiongkeng Oilfield in Taiwan is a place that Dong Shangyi cannot go to, but the Dumai Oilfield under Sing Tao Island is open to him, and Dong Shangyi naturally will not miss this rare opportunity.

If we learn more about the relevant knowledge, maybe if oil is discovered in Fujian in the future, we can organize our own mining and processing.

But when he went ashore and saw the production site of the Dumai oil field with his own eyes, he realized how naive his ideas were.

Looking around, the tall derricks, huge oil storage tanks, and various pipes winding through them are all made of metal and stretch for miles.

These production equipment alone probably consumed no less than tens of millions of kilograms of high-quality steel, which is far beyond the capacity of Fujian Province to bear on its own.

The officials accompanying the tour all proudly introduced to Dong Shangyi that since the oil field was put into production in 1649, it has produced a large amount of petroleum products for Hai Han and achieved extremely rich economic benefits.

As Haihan's industrial demand for petrochemical products increases, the scale of production here will continue to increase. It is expected that in the next few decades, the Dumai Oilfield will be in a state of continuous construction and expansion of production capacity.

Dong Shangyi asked: "The output here should also be shipped out by ship, right?"

The accompanying official nodded and said, "In the entire Xingdao region, we are the only one that has an independent freight fleet that is specifically responsible for transporting petroleum products to Sanya and other places."

The official then explained that ordinary cargo ships can generally transport other materials, but petroleum products are an exception. Various types of fuel need to be stored in metal tanks for transportation, which must be transported by specially structured oil tankers. Therefore, in addition to maintaining the operation of production facilities, the Dumai Oilfield also supports a dedicated transport fleet. Dong Shangyi's original intention of asking about this matter was to see if there was an opportunity for Fujian Shipping to take over the freight business here, but from the other party's answer, this was obviously not realistic. Fujian's cargo ships did not have the special conditions required to transport petrochemical products, so he could only silently give up this idea.

Dong Shangyi then changed the subject and curiously asked how the production efficiency of the Dumai oil field compared to mines in Batam Island, Bangka Island and other places.

The official said disapprovingly: "Those mines that require a large number of miners to dig day and night, how can they be compared with ours? Look at us, we use only mechanical equipment, and the manpower required is only a few tenths of that of the mines, and we can still produce day and night."

Dong Shangyi thought to himself, but that mine only needs a shovel, hoe and bamboo basket to do the work, but your oil field requires a lot of upfront investment before it can produce anything, which is incomparable to those mines.

Dong Shangyi stayed in Dumai for two days. Before leaving, he bought several hundred kilograms of kerosene to take away as a souvenir. The price of kerosene here is half the price of Fujian, which is thousands of miles away. He can save a lot of money.

Across the Strait of Malacca from Dumai is Malacca, which was governed by Portugal. When Dong Shangyi planned his trip before departure, he had already listed Malacca as one of his destinations.

He really wanted to see with his own eyes what the level of Portugal's longest-running and largest colony in Southeast Asia was like.

However, the results of the field visit made him somewhat disappointed. Apart from the city defense projects, the other infrastructure of Malacca was far inferior to that of Hai Han’s port cities.

The port, as the face of the city, was particularly dirty and messy, with rats and drunkards running around the docks. The port facilities were also extremely primitive, and were completely different from the port operations seen in Xingdao. It was no wonder that within just 20 years of building Xingdao Port, Hai Han had already basically replaced Malacca's trading status.

Dong Shangyi also noticed that the Portuguese trading companies here did not have many goods to offer, and most of their business was re-export trade, that is, they acted as middlemen in trade between the East and the West.

The goods on the shelves are either from Europe and the Middle East, or from East Asia. Only about 20% are locally produced, and most of them are various spices.

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Dong Shangyi knew that Xingdao and Luzon were both planting a large area of ​​various spices, and both production capacity and cost were much better than the output of Portugal's colonies. Therefore, the Portuguese trading company had no advantage in the spice business, and most of them could only be shipped back to the country for sale.

If Hai Han’s transport capacity could grow rapidly, the Portuguese trading company’s role as an intermediary might be gradually replaced by Hai Han in a few years.

Dong Shangyi noticed that there were very few Han Chinese in and around Malacca. After asking around, he learned that anyone with a bit of Han Chinese blood had fled to Singapore Island to make a living in recent years. The Han Chinese could get better living conditions and work treatment there, so gradually, no one was willing to stay here and work for the Portuguese.

The Portuguese could only hire locals to do low-level jobs, but it was obvious that the overall quality of Southeast Asian ethnic groups could not be compared with that of the Han people. Otherwise, it would be difficult to explain why the Portuguese ruled here for more than a hundred years, but the city's appearance today is not as good as that of Sing Tao Island, which was built only more than 20 years ago.