Reborn In 17th century India with Black Technology - Chapter 789

Chapter 789: 200,000 Litre Crude oil Refineries (1/2)
5th June 1663

Vijay, sitting in his office in the Simhasana Bhavana, was smiling happily. He was very satisfied after reading the migration report. The more people leave, the quicker the overseas territories develop, and it also leaves more resources for the people who are left behind while simultaneously reducing the burden on the empire’s economy.

Large-scale farming using harvesters has become the biggest disruptor in the empire’s labour force. As modifications and variations of harvesters have come out that would work for all the staple crops in the empire, they have significantly reduced the amount of labour required to harvest the crop. What’s more, only recently, the Gaur Agricultural Company, the leading agricultural machinery company in the empire, has come up with a machine that could be used to plant even rice crops, powered by bulls.

Maybe if the cost of the harvesters were very expensive, people would still rely on traditional harvesting techniques like employing labourers and farm workers. But with the subsidies given by the government, 0-interest loans provided to purchase harvesters, and government agencies renting out harvesters for ridiculously cheap prices, their popularity has only risen instead of falling.

This has led to the situation the empire is in right now, where more than 70% of the empire’s farms have become mechanized, and all of those are large, medium, or small-scale farms, with the smallest being 10 to 20 acres at a time.

In such a time, work for the aspirational class has become very hard to find. Fortunately, infrastructure projects like road construction, government infrastructure building, water conservancy projects, and other projects have managed to somewhat fill up the gap left by the agricultural sector.

However, this is not a long-term solution. People sitting at home with nothing to do is very dangerous. With the government’s convenience for families having more children, he could expect that in the next five to six years, the population would explode once again. They could surpass 190 million and might even reach 200 million.

Thankfully, the aspirational class, the class that is hit heavily by the lack of jobs, is showing keen interest in migrating outside the country for better opportunities. In the beginning, there wasn’t much interest, but as more people emigrated and word of mouth started to ferment, a lot more people began to consider leaving the subcontinent. With this change of mindset, naturally, the outflow of human resources has increased, and due to this outflow, a balance has been formed between the empire and its overseas territories, which has put both regions on a fast track of development.

With joblessness not holding it back, along with the import of various minerals from the overseas territories, the industries of the empire are growing rapidly, and the elevation of the aspirational to the middle class is happening faster than ever. In the rough estimates that Vijay saw every day, there are a few hundred thousand aspirational-class people being elevated to the middle class.

On the other hand, in the overseas territories, with the arrival of immigrants from the Bharatiya Empire, new settlements and societies are being formed, thereby forming new microeconomies throughout the frontiers. Using the manpower from the empire, minerals found in the overseas territories are mined and sent back to the mainland as exports, thereby earning a lot of money, which is further used to develop and expand the living space for people in the overseas territories. The relationship between the Bharatiya Empire and its overseas territories has become a win-win cooperation.

Year to date, nearly 1.3 million tons worth of cargo exchanges containing minerals, equipment, tools, agricultural produce, and industrial products have taken place, benefiting not only the Bharatiya Empire and its overseas territories but even the Southeast Asian nations, which have truly opened up to trade between themselves.

It is for this reason that Vijay, who wanted to immediately set up a refinery, delayed it until now because he had to micromanage the share of resources to the overseas territories while constantly monitoring public sentiment.

“Your Majesty, the carriage is prepared,” Ganesh informed.

“Good,” Vijay nodded as he closed the file on his table and left the room.

A few moments later, he set off to Ahom in order to handle the matters of the Raya Petroleum Company.

—

Digboi, Ahom

As soon as Vijay entered the northeastern state, he was immediately welcomed by its king, Jaydwaj Singha. Vijay smiled and talked with him for a while, after which he bid farewell and came to the location of the oil well.

As he entered the compound of the oil well, he could see a lot of workers wearing grey uniforms and yellow wooden helmets standing at the side, looking at him with respect. These were the workers of his company, he realized. He hadn’t seen the uniform before since he had not designed it; he simply left it to Kavya to do it.

At the front, he could see a circular compound. It looked like a well but its colour and the material used to build it said otherwise. Getting close, he got a very pungent smell. He squinted his eyebrows. Looking inside, he saw thick, gooey liquid bubbling from time to time.

Yes, it was crude oil.

A slight smile adorned his face. “Who is the engineer here?” he asked without looking back as he dipped his hand into the crude oil that had reached the top of the well and rubbed it in order to feel its viscosity and texture for himself.

“Your Majesty.” A man came forward and did a namaskar with a slight bow. Vijay looked at him. He was a middle-aged man with a little stubble on his face, wearing, similar to others, a wooden cap, but different from others, it was orange.

Vijay didn’t talk much and immediately explained what had to be done.

“The modified steam engine should have reached this facility yesterday.”

The engineer nodded in agreement.

Vijay continued, “Assemble the steam engine iron suction pipe to the vacuum chamber.”

“As for where the steam engine is going to be built…” Vijay stroked his chin and looked around. He did not notice any obvious depression in the land; it was flat ground.

“It can be built anywhere you feel it is convenient, just keep in mind the logistics layout.”

“As for the reservoir… is there a depression in the land anywhere near here?”

The engineer thought for a while and shook his head. “It is flat ground, Your Majesty. There are no depressions here.”

‘Pity,’ Vijay thought about it and ordered, “In that case, pick another area in the facility and dig a pool just like the water reservoir used in the villages, but it does not have to be so big or so deep. 1.5 meters should be plenty. Holding 10,000 litres of crude oil should be enough.”

“At the corner of the pool, dig a little deeper. Let’s dig it around three feet down; it should be 4 to 5 feet wide as well. Use this as the loading station for the oil. Attach a ceramic pipe to the oil reservoir, put a valve to it, and use it to fill up the barrels. I guess you can also use a custom-built rail platform to move the barrels up the slope.”

“Do however you find it more convenient.”

The engineer quickly sketched out an outline on a paper and nodded, “Understood, Your Majesty. Please rest assured, in a few days, I will have everything built, and by the end of the week, the extraction of crude oil should commence.”

Vijay was satisfied. He praised the engineer with a few words and immediately set off. But he did not forget to send a telegram to Baskaracharya about quickening the pace of transporting the modified Devaraya steam engines to various oil wells so that extraction could begin there as quickly as possible.

Leaving Digboi, Vijay was going to overview the construction of the refineries, as well as direct the installation of the large equipment. At first, he thought that he would need to install one single refinery, like the Jamnagar refinery in his previous life, which was the biggest oil refinery in India and one of the biggest in the world. But with consideration to today’s conditions, he decided to establish two different refineries—one on the western coast for oil coming from the West and the other on the eastern coast for the oil coming from the East.

Originally, he didn’t think that the eastern coast was important because even if it was able to refine crude oil from oil wells in Southeast Asia and the ones located in the empire, he felt maybe in the future when drilling for oil becomes more common, the refinery on the East would not be as useful since most of the oil resources are located in the Arabian Peninsula and the Middle East. But after remembering that Siberia and the Far East in this era could be completely different from his last life, he quickly figured out that oil resources from Russia could be refined in the eastern refinery. What is more, the eastern refinery has numerous trade routes connecting Tibet, which Vijay wants to develop in the near future, and it can also be used to sell oil to the Qing Empire, one of the biggest markets in the world.

The journey from Digboi to Chittagong stretched over 700 kilometres, which took Vijay two whole days to travel. Fortunately, he could take a ship from Chittagong to go back, making it faster and more convenient.

Chittagong is the place he chose for the eastern refinery to be stationed.

For an oil refinery with an ambition to be the best in the world to be built, a lot of things have to be considered. For example, the Jamnagar refinery in his past life had a lot of things going for it. It had a very strategic coastal location; its proximity to the Middle East gave it a lot of advantages. The land was available in abundance, political and economic support was provided by the government, and not to mention it had an integrated infrastructure where crude oil processing units, petrochemical plants, power generation facilities, and special economic zones for exports were all present in a single area. The visionary planning by the Reliance leaders cannot be ignored as well.

To be Continued…

P.S. Thankyou, Ron_Blackwood for x2 Pizzas and x4 Ice colas

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DAMN!!!