Chapter 44: That Time I Drilled for Oil in South America (3)

TL: Skye

In the west of San Marcos, there existed a venerable coal mine known as Mine No. 7.

Thanks to its abundant reserves, this mine had shouldered a significant portion of San Marcos's electricity production since independence, but as the years passed, those reserves dwindled and the mine's vitality faded with them.

Recently, however, the mine had regained its vigor.

As the saying goes, squeeze hard enough and even a dried squid gives water. When they kept digging all the way down, a new coal seam was discovered.

There was just one problem. The seam was located impossibly deep underground. How deep? Deep enough that temperatures in the new shaft exceeded 40 degrees Celsius.

Naturally, the miners refused to work, insisting no human being could labor in such conditions.

This threw the Coal Corporation's executives into a quandary.

Production had plummeted to the point where the company's very reason for existing was in question, and just when a glimmer of hope appeared, it turned out they couldn't actually extract any of it.

Fortunately, however, His Excellency Yu-jin Choi, the light, the salt, and the very sun of San Marcos, graciously stepped in to resolve the matter.

The solution: send criminals to the mine and make them work off their debts.

And so, Prison Camp No. 7 was born inside the mine.

Ride the mine cart down from the entrance for about three minutes, and fifty dugout cells came into view. Each one barely measured three square meters, and the furnishings consisted of a single damp bedroll, a bucket for waste, and a shovel for cleanup.

The one silver lining? At least they were single cells.

But what drove him even crazier than the wretched facilities was something else entirely.

"Number 1405! You think you can move any slower?!"

Forced labor in a hellish environment exceeding 40 degrees.

Josh Harrington felt the searing heat wash over him and spat out a curse.

"Son of a bitch..."

The daily routine here was simple. Wake at 7 a.m., eat breakfast, descend into the shaft, and mine coal for ten hours. After that, eat dinner, wash up, go back to the cell, and sleep. That was it.

There was a quota system, of course, meaning anyone who finished early could rest, but the quota was so steep that Josh had never once managed to meet it.

In America, human rights organizations would have been up in arms and the UN would have intervened, but this was San Marcos, a country that couldn't care less about the rights of criminals.

'I have to escape... I have to get out of here.'

So Josh dreamed of escape at every opportunity. He'd even secretly conspired with the Chevron executives who'd been brought in with him.

But that plan was tossed in the trash before long.

'How is there... only one way out?'

The underground shaft stretched roughly a kilometer deep before reaching the surface, and armed guards were stationed every hundred meters.

The only time inmates were allowed outside was during meals, and even then, thirty soldiers armed with automatic rifles kept the area locked down tight.

Escape under those conditions? That was just asking to be turned into Swiss cheese.

And what truly tormented Josh wasn't the hellish environment or the labor.

"Hey, Yankee."

It was the people.

"Tonight. You know the drill, right?"

Garcia Motiñu. The worst insurrectionist, the man who'd instigated a civil war, now sharing this prison camp with Josh, and tormenting him without end.

"P-please... could you just stop..."

Thwack!

Garcia's fist slammed into Josh's solar plexus.

"Ghhk!"

"If you hadn't talked me into it, I wouldn't be living like this. My life is in the gutter because of you. And you want me to stop? If you don't want to die, be ready tonight. Got it?"

It wasn't just Garcia. His younger brother Dani Motiñu, the former SIA Director and bureau chief arrested on embezzlement charges, and former high-ranking officials dismissed for corruption. Every last one of them had been somebody, and every last one of them blamed their downfall on Chevron, which meant on Josh and his fellow executives.

And honestly? They weren't entirely wrong. Chevron's scheming had gotten President Juan Marcos and his cabinet ministers killed, which was how that terrifying Yu-jin Choi ended up seizing power in the first place.

Thanks to all of that, Josh and the other former Chevron executives were now living in hell.

"Hey, you pencil-pusher. What do you call that shoveling? You never served in the military or what?"

The former SIA bureau chief cracked Josh across the back of the head.

"Move it, you bastard! You're holding up the whole line!"

Dani Motiñu kicked him in the back.

Every single one of them had a military background, so Josh and the executives, who'd spent their entire lives pushing paper, didn't stand a chance.

Beaten by the guards during the day, pummeled by fellow inmates during breaks, and subjected to unspeakable things at night. The daily cycle of it brought Josh to tears.

"Hnngh..."

He thought dying might be better. Break the shovel handle and stab himself in the throat? Or bash his head against the wall?

But a man who'd lived his entire life in wealth and comfort didn't even have the courage to kill himself.

That was when it happened.

Click, click.

The sound of dress shoes, utterly out of place in this hellish shaft.

Josh looked up to see a man in a crisp suit approaching, a handkerchief pressed over his nose.

"My, my. Prison life seems to be rather hard on you?"

It was Lucio, the SIA Director, the very man who'd thrown him in this place.

"How are you finding it? Manageable, I hope?"

***

San Marcos's crude oil exports were sailing along with the wind at their back.

"The major US oil companies are lining up."

At Isabella's report, I couldn't suppress a satisfied smile.

And for good reason. Not only had the estimated reserves tripled, but the quality had turned out to be far better than expected.

Back when negotiations with Chevron were underway, they'd been told it was heavy crude oil, similar to Venezuela's. But once they actually started drilling, it turned out to be light crude oil, comparable to Guyana's output.

As a result, refining costs were minimal, and on top of that, the geographic advantage meant US oil majors were snapping up every barrel as fast as it could be produced.

"That's good to hear."

"Once Chevron's offshore plant goes online, daily output will increase to 400,000 barrels. At current oil prices, that puts estimated revenue at roughly 9.5 billion dollars."

"9.5 billion dollars..."

Of course, not all of that would be profit.

FPSO drilling costs ran about 25 dollars per barrel, and the offshore plant came in at around 20 dollars per barrel. After all the deductions, roughly 6 billion dollars would remain, but...

'Can't complain about that.'

Considering there was a time when San Marcos's entire annual budget barely reached 2 billion dollars, this was something to be grateful for.

And on top of that.

"Once the refinery plant is completed, the value-add will increase further. If we can sell refined petroleum products to neighboring countries like Venezuela and Guyana, margins will double."

Refining added a margin of four to five dollars per barrel.

Compared to the margin from extracting and selling crude, that seemed small, but it was nothing to scoff at.

Oil fields run dry eventually, but a refinery can keep running indefinitely.

Even just importing Venezuelan crude, refining it, and reselling it would rake in a fortune.

A sustainable revenue stream, one might call it.

If things continued at this pace, a bright tomorrow and a beautiful future for San Marcos was all but guaranteed... or so I had thought.

[...Accordingly, the US administration is reviewing an executive order to impose a 30% tariff on San Marcos, whose exports to the US have surged recently, in order to address the trade imbalance.]

America came knocking with objections.

[They are plundering our money! We must be great again!]

"Oh, come on."

Just how great did they need to be to pull this nonsense?

"They asked us to sell it to them. It's not like we were begging to sell."

Just a few months ago they were saying, 'Yes, that's exactly what you should do!' Promising to give full support throughout their term! What was wrong with this man?!

"...Has he gone senile?"

The cause of this crisis was clear. While San Marcos was raking in massive amounts of dollars selling oil, the amount it was importing from the US was next to nothing.

It couldn't be helped. The purchasing power of San Marcos's citizens was among the lowest in the world, so American goods simply wouldn't sell even if they were imported.

'They can't even afford Mexican products. How on earth are they supposed to...'

When earning 400 dollars a month made someone high-income, how were they supposed to buy a 40,000-dollar American car or 50-dollar clothing?

At least with grain, American products were cheap enough to bring in. But manufactured goods? Not a chance.

In any case, to sum up the current situation in a single phrase...

"There's no good answer."

That was the conclusion.

So what could be done at a time like this?

"I'm sorry about the late hour, but we need to convene a Cabinet meeting. Gather the Senior Secretaries immediately."

The wisdom of crowds.

***

Shortly past 1 a.m., having called the Senior Secretaries together, Yu-jin spoke.

"What we've been expecting has arrived."

The mood in the conference room was as somber as a funeral.

Given that USMCA member nations faced an oil tariff of only 10%, a 30% tariff on San Marcos crude would obliterate their price competitiveness.

They could sell to other countries, of course. South Korea alone had more than enough capacity to import.

But did those countries pay as well as America? That was a different story.

The structure had been one where the savings on shipping costs translated into a better price.

Even if they made concessions on price and sold to European or Asian nations, that could never be the real answer.

'If we get hit with tariffs now, it means we'll keep getting hit going forward.'

Oil wasn't infinite. It would run out someday. When I thought about the future transition to an industrial economy, this was the worst possible outcome.

In the end, there was only one answer. Dodge as much as possible. And if we had to take a hit, minimize the damage.

"We need to increase imports. If we buy more American goods, the trade deficit shrinks, and the justification for tariffs disappears."

"Everyone knows that. The question is what to buy."

It was no easy problem, and a heated debate erupted among the Senior Secretaries.

"Let's increase food imports. Corn, wheat flour, that sort of thing."

"We can't even consume what we already have, so what's the point of importing more? Are we going to give it away to the people for free? That's communism. That's socialism."

"How about importing gold? If we purchase American gold bullion..."

"Don't be absurd. Where are you going to find that much gold? And if we start stockpiling gold, they'll scream about us plundering America's gold reserves and throw an even bigger fit."

"Then let's replace all government vehicles with American cars."

"How many government vehicles do we even have? At that rate, why not import six million and give every citizen one?"

"Now listen here! You think just because words come out of your mouth they make sense?!"

Just as the discussion seemed hopelessly deadlocked, Isabella, who had been silent until then, spoke up.

"What if we purchase US Treasury bonds?"

"Treasury bonds?"

"Yes. If we use the dollars we've earned to buy US Treasury bonds, that money effectively flows back into America. From the US perspective, it has the effect of repatriating dollars and helps their fiscal position, so they'd have no reason to object. At least, that's my thinking."

"Ah...!"

I slapped my knee. From the buyer's perspective, US Treasury bonds were practically the same as cash. And they even paid interest, so it was hardly a losing proposition.

"That's a good idea. Work with Senior Secretary Ricardo to review it."

"Yes, understood."

But something still nagged at me. The other side was Drump, as unpredictable as a rugby ball. Would buying a few Treasury bonds really be enough to satisfy him?

'I feel like we need something more... one decisive blow.'

As that thought lingered, it happened.

"Your Excellency, might I have a word with you somewhere private?"

Lucio requested a meeting, and the opinion he put forward was a bombshell.

"I believe it would be worthwhile to make donations to the Republican Party."

"Donations?"

"Yes. Whether it's campaign funds or political contributions, greasing the wheels with money and lobbying would be highly effective, in my estimation."

"Hmm..."

He had a point. Lobbying was legal in America, after all.

However.

"Isn't it illegal for a foreign government to donate to a US political party? If we're not careful, it'll blow up in our faces."

The problem was that if a non-American, a foreigner no less, donated with state funds rather than personal money, it would amount to bribery.

Granted, back-channel lobbying was common enough. Japan, for instance, had been steadily spreading lobby money around for years.

But that was Japan, America's top-priority ally and the world's third-largest economy. If San Marcos tried the same thing, they'd get their teeth kicked in.

'If we lobby the Republicans, there's no way the Democrats just sit quietly.'

People who'd lobbied on Russia's behalf had been indicted on espionage charges one after another, hadn't they?

But Lucio, as always, had found a way.

"You're correct. Officially, it's impossible."

"Then how?"

"San Marcos-born American citizens make the donations in their personal capacity."

"Ah... right. If someone with US citizenship makes the donation, it's perfectly legal."

"I'm told that Elon Musk of Tesla donated 300 million dollars during the last presidential election. A contribution of that magnitude would be more than enough to secure Drump's goodwill."

"...300 million dollars?"

A staggering sum that made my jaw drop.

"Is there a San Marcos-born American citizen who could put up that kind of donation money... actually?"

"I can say with certainty that even if you pooled the assets of every San Marcos national living in the US, it wouldn't come to 300 million, let alone 100 million dollars."

"Then how?"

"The government would need to provide support, naturally."

"...I told you, that won't work. As I just said, using state funds for political donations constitutes bribery. And don't even think about laundering it. This is America we're talking about... they'd catch it, guaranteed."

"Not to worry. The SIA has secured funds with no name attached."

"Funds with no name attached?"

"You know the former Chevron executives locked up in the prison camp? When we went through their pockets, it turned out they had a substantial amount of thoroughly laundered money. If we use that for lobbying, there's zero chance of detection. It's all in cryptocurrency, and the ultimate owners on record are American citizens."

"H-how much are we talking about?"

"A little over 700 million dollars."

"...!"

Looking at Lucio's face, which practically screamed 'praise me', I thought:

If I sent this man to Korea, the country might run clean out of tax evaders.

*****

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