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Found this with a quick search: https://histclo.com/essay/war/ww2/eco/r ... o-ger.html

'Maikop alone would have given the Germans what they needed. The Germans had expected Soviet demolition of the oil fields and refineries and rushed specialists to Maikop to repair the damage. But the field was very effectively demolished. And substantial repairs were needed requiring a great deal of equipment and material. The entire southern operation was being run on a shoe string and the German logistical system was barely supplying the minimum needs of the front-line soldiers, Thus getting large quantities of drilling equipment and other supplies through to Maikop proved impossible. In addition the small German oil industry had only a small number of qualified men who were capable of redrilling the wells. And there was the additional problem of bringing the refineries back on line. The Germans had only begun this process when the Soviet launched Operation Uranus, surrounding the 6th Army in Stalingrad (November 1942). As a result of this and further Red Army offensives, the Germans were forced to withdraw from Maikop (January 1943). Not a single barrel of oil had been raised. The Germans were able to extract about 4.7 million barrels from other Soviet sources. [Petzina, pp. 143-44.]'

Seems like you've got a point there. I do think you should be rewarded if you manage to hold the area long enough to extract oil though.

I'll leave this image album with information on Soviet petroleum industry development: https://imgur.com/a/qXGPBPB

ORIGINAL: Jango32

I'll leave this image album with information on Soviet petroleum industry development: https://imgur.com/a/qXGPBPB

fascinating thank you, so the Soviets seriously modernised their oil industry from the late 1920s. Wonder if that would have made it easier for the Germans or not, guess would depend in part how available the parts and technical skills to repurpose essentially US-UK equipment was?

thats after sorting out the inevitable sabotage etc

Note:
for some reason unknown to me the fuel refineries are removed after capture, just oil continues to exist.
due to different production multiplier Axis may only get half the oil from captured oil facilities.
I hope we may use the event system at some time in the future to actually reduce available oil in a location to simulate the massive sabotage made by retreating soviets

Hi, just got the game so still catching up, but dealing with this issue based on historical documents.

re: Caucasus. As noted above, the Russians completely wrecked the wells and the Germans were not able to fix them before they evacuated. But even if they had, there was no practical way to get the Oil back to Germany. There were no pipelines, so the Oil would have had to be transported by rail cars or shipped across the Black Sea. For a whole bunch of reasons, this was not a viable solution. Capturing the Caucasus Oil Fields was more about denying it to the Russians, than being able to use it themselves.

re: Oil Production. Oil producton, mostly synthetic Oil kept increasing until mid-44. Germans were always short and used strict rationing and allocations so that each branch (Army, Air Force, Navy, Industry, etc.) and Allies had just enough to meet operational needs. Even then, operations were often curtailed due to lack of fuel. The Germans also operated with a very small strategic reserve. At one point, Britsh intelligence was able to find out the number and they did not believe it was true since it was so low. Oil production only went down after mid-44 when 1) US/UK realized they should bomb the synthetic oil factories and 2) the Romanian Oil fields were lost. Even then, they were able to scrape enough fuel to supply the units in the battle of the Bulge with a 10 day supply.