Next, Zeng Yuheng, Minister of Public Works, talked about the mining industry opened in various places and the iron and steel factories directly under the imperial court.

"Your Majesty, as for mining, it is mainly concentrated in the mining of iron and copper ore and the mining of limestone, coal mines, holy oil, well salt and other minerals, in addition to some gold, silver, lead and tin mines, sulfur, saltpeter, jade, alkali, gypsum, phosphate rock, potash ore, kaolin, diatomaceous earth, fluorite mines, boron ore, and so on. The Ministry of Public Works has set up a special Department of Minerals to manage and explore metallic and non-metallic minerals throughout the country, and in accordance with His Majesty's will, a charter has been issued early to regulate it. Among them, well salt, holy oil, copper ore, sulfur, saltpeter, etc. are directly mined by the Chinese Imperial Salt Industry Corporation, the Chinese Imperial Holy Oil Corporation, and the Chinese Imperial Mining Corporation, which were directly established by the imperial court, and other coal, pig iron, gold and silver, jade, alkali, and potash mines are all mined by the imperial court and the local governments of various provinces and governments. In addition, it is also handed over to a mining company run by the government for recycling and export. Except for the five types of minerals such as mine salt, holy oil, copper ore, sulfur and saltpeter, private and foreign capital are not allowed to exploit them, and the rest are relaxed private prospecting and mining rights, and foreign capital is allowed to enter the field of mineral mining, but the imperial court or local government must hold more than 50% of the shares to ensure that the mining area is under the control of the imperial court. ”

"According to His Majesty's decree, many large-scale mining areas have been discovered in recent years, and the exploration and identification of our country's mineral resources are very rich. As of the beginning of this year, the holy oil has developed the Xiangzhou Oilfield in Guangxi, the Changqingqiao Oilfield in Ningzhou, Gansu, the Ren'anqiang Oilfield in Myanmar, the Balikpapan Oilfield in Borneo, and the Sayria Oilfield in Brunei, and the Petroleum and Fertilizer Division has directly built an oil refinery next to the oilfield, which is mainly used to concentrate on the production of holy oil for lighting and fire oil for military operations, and even uses gasoline in the fire oil to produce incendiary bombs. In addition, according to His Majesty's guidance, the Petroleum and Fertilizer Division spent more than two years to discover a large oil field named Shengli Oilfield by His Majesty in the tidal flat in the eastern part of Lijin County, Wuding Prefecture, Shandong, but because it is located in the tidal flat, and the oil layer is buried to a depth of hundreds of meters, according to the existing technology, it is difficult to exploit on a large scale for the time being; In Jianghua Town, Qianjiang County, Anlu Prefecture, Hubei, a large oil field was also discovered, which His Majesty named Jianghan Oilfield, but it was also due to the depth of burial, and it could not be exploited on a large scale for the time being. In addition, the Liaohe oil field was discovered in the lower reaches of the Liaohe River in Jinzhou Prefecture in Liaoning Province, the Zhongyuan oil field was discovered in the east of Anyang County, Zhangde Prefecture in Henan, and a large oil field was discovered in a place called Heiyou Mountain in the Tuerhut tribe in Xinjiang. ”

Feng Yunshan was most concerned about oil, and hurriedly asked: "Aiqing, do you know how many tons of crude oil are produced in the five major surface oil fields in the country in a year?" How much refined oil can be produced by the refinery built? ”

Zeng Yuheng scratched his head, he couldn't say it, but Xu Shou, deputy minister of the Ministry of Public Works and director of the Department of Petroleum and Fertilizer, stood up and said loudly: "Back to Your Majesty, last year, Guangxi Xiangzhou Oilfield extracted a total of 5,000 tons of crude oil, but this is the smallest output; Although the Changqingqiao Oilfield in Ningzhou, Gansu Province is only the second year of oil production, it has extracted 72,000 tons of crude oil; Myanmar's Ringanqiang oilfield, which extracted 85,000 tons of crude oil; Balikpapan oil field in Borneo, which extracted 170,000 tons of crude oil; Brunei's Seriya oilfield extracted 280,000 tons of crude oil, that is, a total of 612,000 tons of crude oil was produced in the country last year. In terms of refineries, the refinery at the foot of Xihua Mountain, formerly west of Guangzhou, has expanded its capacity to 200,000 tonnes per year, and has reached saturation to handle the Xiangzhou oilfield in Guangxi, the Ringanqiang oilfield in Myanmar and the Balikpapan oilfield in Borneo. The Changqingqiao Oilfield in Ningzhou, Gansu Province has directly set up an oil refinery on the spot, with a scale of 100,000 tons, which is expected to be unable to meet the production needs of the Changqingqiao Oilfield next year; As for the Brunei Sairiya oil field, no refinery was built, and the imperial court, in accordance with His Majesty's will, set up a super-large oil refinery in Zhenhai, Zhejiang, with an annual processing capacity of 200,000 tons in the first phase, which has been put into operation, and the second phase with an annual processing capacity of 300,000 tons, which is already under construction. In addition, the imperial court also set up two large-scale oil refineries in Tanggukou in Tianjin Prefecture and Maoming in Gaozhou Prefecture in Guangdong, which are expected to be completed next year. Last year, a total of 360,000 tons of crude oil were processed, and the remaining 250,000 tons of crude oil were stored. A total of about 185,000 tons of refined oil were obtained from oil refining, including 42,000 tons of holy oil (in fact, kerosene and light diesel oil) used for lighting and lighting, 30,000 tons of gasoline, 23,000 tons of diesel, and 90,000 tons of heavy fire oil. ”

When Feng Yunshan heard this, he sighed that he had finally made some achievements in petroleum refining, leading the world, and secondly, he couldn't help but sigh that the refined oil refined by the most primitive atmospheric oil refining process in this era was too low. Normally, when he worked in the refinery in later generations, the total yield of gasoline, diesel and kerosene could reach about 61%, but now, the holy oil and gasoline and diesel refined from 360,000 tons of crude oil are only 95,000 tons, which is only a little more than a quarter, and even less than 30%. There is no way but to increase the output of refined oil by smelting more crude oil bases. The most regrettable thing is that most of those heavy fire oils are diesel, which is the best energy used as power machinery, but now, not to mention diesel engines, even gasoline engines have not been invented, and can only be turned into heavy fire oil used as heating fuel for steel mills and coke factories and hot oil for war.

Yan Jingming, the new vice minister of finance and taxation, added at this time: "Your Majesty, the Department of Petroleum and Fertilizer will divide the refined holy oil into two parts: domestic and foreign. In the domestic part, it was handed over to the Ministry of Commerce and strategic materials such as salt, holy fertilizer, seeds, and tobacco, which were sold by the imperial court and local governments, and handed over to Nanyang Company for external sales, with huge profits. Last year alone, 42,000 tons of holy oil were supplied to 34,000 tons at home and 8,000 tons abroad, mainly to Japan, Prussia and France. The price of holy oil in China is 5 s$ for 25 kilograms, but each household can buy up to 50 kilograms of holy oil per year. Abroad, it has more than doubled, selling for 5 syr. Last year, a total of 6.8 million saint dollars were sold in China and 4 million million saint dollars abroad, and a total of tens of millions of saint dollars were made after excluding costs. Second only to holy fertilizer, it is the sum of salt and seed tobacco and other materials. This year will be more, from the Ministry of Commerce to get the news, this year the production of holy oil will increase significantly, will increase the proportion of sales to foreign countries, is expected to sell to Prussia, France, Japan, India and other places will be more than 50,000 tons of holy oil, in this way, the income will reach a staggering 25 million holy dollars, will become a huge commodity after tea. ”

Feng Yunshan was overjoyed after hearing this, the former foreign oil has now become holy oil, and he finally did not come to this world in vain. He knows that before the popularization of electricity and the use of electric lights in large quantities, the market for kerosene lighting will always exist, at least for nearly forty or fifty years, because he was the prophet to take the lead in large-scale exploitation of oil fields and oil refining, to seize the market, but at this time the United States and Russia will soon enter a new era of oil exploitation and refining, what they can do is to occupy all the markets first, after all, this oil era is the pace of history, no one can stop it, and they can only adapt in advance and control it as much as possible.

The next step is to unite with France and control the Middle East. The next 150 years of the world will revolve around the Middle East, an oil-producing region, and I can't miss such a good opportunity.

This is not in a hurry for the time being, let's listen to Zeng Yuheng talk about other mineral mining situations.

Zeng Yuheng received the emperor's signal and continued to report: "Your Majesty, since the formulation and implementation of the first five-year plan, the imperial court promulgated the "Mining Regulations of the Chinese Empire", and the Ministry of Public Works has set up a special Mining Supervision Bureau to supervise the exploration and mining operation of the mine, and has formulated and implemented a series of mining management and incentive measures, which not only put an end to the indiscriminate mining of minerals, but also encourage private investment to enter the permitted mineral mining, and work with the local government to mine and develop the local economy. Phosphate and iron ore were the favorite of local merchants, followed by gold, silver, coal, limestone and other minerals. Nowadays, almost every state capital has iron ore and limestone mines jointly established by local merchants and the government, and it is precisely because of this that the raw materials of pig iron, coal and cement are sufficient, and the output will increase significantly. Your Majesty, the year before last the country mined a total of 500,000 tons of coal, smelted 180,000 tons of raw iron, 12,000 tons of iron and steel, and produced 120,000 tons of cement; last year, the country mined 750,000 tons of coal, smelted 320,000 tons of pig iron, 19,000 tons of iron and steel, and produced 250,000 tons of cement; it is expected that this year the country will produce 1.1 million tons of coal, 500,000 tons of pig iron, 30,000 tons of steel, and 400,000 tons of cement. ”