synthetic oil?

[Neilster]

ORIGINAL: composer99

Curious that the USSR's oil production dropped so precipitously in between '41 and '42 given that they didn't lose any major oil fields to Germany. Perhaps they shut down refineries to transfer the workers to factories churning out war materiél or to serve in the Red Army?

Or perhaps the maintenance infrastructure was massively disrupted by the evacuation of industry from European Russia.

Cheers, Neilster

[iamspamus]

ORIGINAL: composer99

Curious that the USSR's oil production dropped so precipitously in between '41 and '42 given that they didn't lose any major oil fields to Germany. Perhaps they shut down refineries to transfer the workers to factories churning out war materiél or to serve in the Red Army?

I thought that they burned one (Grozny?) and shut down some in anticipation of the Germans. Is that not right? Also, couldn't this represent a manpower drain? Finally, was there not a big amount being drawn from the Middle East or were these mostly discovered later?

Jason

[38special]

I know that US companies had discovered oil in Saudi in the early 30s and some UK companies in Kuwait at about the same time. So with the war starting in 39, there may have been some delay in properly developing these fields to their potential.