846 On the Ocean (1/2)
Oil crops weren't first created by Future Biology.
As early as the 1970s, Nobel Prize-winning scientist Melvin Calvin discovered a tall evergreen tree named Hevea brasiliensis in the tropical rain forest in Brazil. After drilling a small hole, it was possible to produce a small amount of oil similar to diesel.
In 1986, the UA took the lead in growing ”oil crops.” Subsequently, other countries also successively carried out researches on the applications of ”oil crops”, then established new environmentally-friendly oil production bases such as ”oil botanical gardens” and ”oil farms.”
Unfortunately, as of today, this kind of green energy still has not been widely used.
Not because it wasn't easy to use but because of cost and production-related issues.
Let's talk about production first.
What was Saudi Arabia's oil production last year? According to data released by OPEC, this figure exceeded the historical peak of 12.5 million barrels in 2018...
Per day!
Yes, 12.5 million barrels per day! Think about the concept of this number?
In contrast, the UA, which was relatively advanced in the field of oil crop research, only harvested 140 barrels per hectare on ”oil farms” per year. That was a more lenient calculation, even if its quality was equivalent to 120 barrels of crude oil. At present, there were only 100,000 hectares of oil crops in the UA and 12 million barrels of oil were produced each year.
Clear data intuitively explained the problem.
The production of oil crops in the UA was less than the amount of oil produced by OPEC countries in one day. Of course, it wasn't equal to the daily oil production of Texas.
It was obviously impractical for this level of production to challenge the status of crude oil.
Therefore, all countries only used this kind of ”oil crops” as an alternative development project for their energy strategies. They subsidized these ”farms” through various energy and environmental protection policies so they wouldn't die out. After all, no one could be certain what the future is.
Perhaps one day, the Middle East would drill out the last drop of oil and these oil crops might have hopes of becoming a life-saving straw to solve the energy crisis.
Of course, it was only a wishful thinking.
After all, this output was too little!
However, in Future Biology's labs, ”oil palm” was different. With only one slice, more than 10 liters of sap would flow out from underneath the bark! A barrel of oil was equivalent to 159 liters and 16 trees could produce a barrel of oil. And this kind of sap could be collected once a week!
Assuming 100 ”oil palms” could be grown on one acre of land, the average daily output of an acre of land would already be close to one barrel of oil!
100,000 acres would produce a daily output of 100,000 barrels of oil. It would only take one million acres of”oil palm” and several refineries that specifically refined this sap to meet the energy needs of Xin. It would also open up the possibility of exporting to major oil importing nations in the region.
After coming out from the lab, Jiang Chen immediately made an order to purchase all palm trees on the market and he asked hid CEO to urge the lab to do their utmost to perform induced differentiation on these acquired palm trees.
The former was a simple task. Palm trees were common in the region from New Guinea to even Xin. After a phone call from Jiang Chen, Santos immediately organized Moro peasants to head into the mountains, use trucks and tractors to pull millions of palms into the port and sell them to Future Group at a reasonable price.
This move was nothing for this island with rich resources. Santos was secretively ecstatic that he made a fortune. The amount of money Jiang Chen paid him was about 20 million US Dollar, and he only paid a million to the farmers.
Jiang Chen voted against the idea of growing oil palms in Country F plantations after some thoughtful consideration.