Rubber...an Asian affair?

[potski]

Case in point, oil production in the Middle East is vastly different between then

Rubber is grown on trees, literally. Oil in the Middle East is buried deep underground. No-one knew it was in North Africa for certain in the 1940's, no oil was discovered in Libya until the 1950's. No-one was able to extract oil in the North Sea until the 1970's. And it was only in the last couple of years that Russia was able to extract oil in deep water sites off Sakhalin or Canada in the Hebron field. They are now able to extract oil which is in some of the most environmentally and technically difficult situations in the world. The scale of the construction projects is enormous, and the technology to control the drilling miles under the sea is cutting edge. They get a little knife and strip the bark off rubber trees.

 

[potski]

Where are your figures for Liberia in 1940 ?

I haven't got any. It's not up to me to prove that this is wrong. But

May I suggest that:
(1) Congo's 11,000 is 20% of the reported African 1944 production of 55,000--not exactly insignificant.

Is he right on the numbers?

Obviously he's wrong on the significance, given that the video said (and you guys were basing your assumptions on) that 97% of the rubber producing areas in the world were under Japanese control during the war. And we know that rubber was produced in India as well as Africa. So the order of magnitude of production in SEA was millions of tons. And all the evidence is that Belgian Congo/DRC produced and still produces less than 30,000 tons - a tiny proportion of the world's rubber then and now.

 

[Mandraug]

potski, your posts are usually very informative about the game and thoughtful. But here you simply miss your mark.

As you have yourself shown, tiny Liberia now produces more rubber than all of Africa did in the 40's. Rubber production, or generally sylviculture, is not immune to technological innovation (breeding, more recently genetic engineering) or investment (land use change). Congo could clear the whole damn rainforest and make a giant rubber plantation (and thank god they didn't) before letting it revert. Nor is it immune to price swings, changes in supply and demand and thus decadal production increases/decreases. In short, whether we're talking about rubber, oil, cars, or whatever, 70 years is a long time in modern economics and all sorts of things can change. Assuming

Let's not keep this going.

 

[Mandraug]

Is he right on the numbers?

I was just referring to this earlier post, which you may have missed:

1940 --- 697 tons
1941 --- 1318 tons
1942 --- 1643 tons --- 5% of african production
1943 --- 7974 tons --- 17% of african production
1944 --- 11287 tons --- 21% of african production
1945 --- 7989 tons --- 15% of african production

Obviously he's wrong on the significance, given that the video said (and you guys were basing your assumptions on) that 97% of the rubber producing areas in the world were under Japanese control during the war. And we know that rubber was produced in India as well as Africa. So the order of magnitude of production in SEA was millions of tons. And all the evidence is that Belgian Congo/DRC produced and still produces less than 30,000 tons - a tiny proportion of the world's rubber then and now.

Yes, sorry, I meant significant with respect to Africa, since that seemed to be the focus of your post here:

In the context of the historical figures you already produced. Total production in all of Africa was less than 55,000 tons:

And we know that Nigeria, Liberia, Cameroon, Ghana and Gabon all currently produce significantly more than DRC. It's a pretty reasonable assumption DRC was not producing all of the African rubber in the war. That it was probably producing something similar to now, and it's production has remained fairly static, given how stagnant the DRC economy is. While some other's have invested and built up their production. They are one of the poorest countries in the world, despite their mineral deposits. And it covers a massive area. It doesn't seem likely that they had much more production in 1945 than 12,000 tons, and then just chopped down their rubber trees.

The devs gave Liberia 4 rubber. Recent data is 63,000 tons Liberia, 12,000 DRC. Is there any evidence that Congo actually produced as much or more than Liberia in the 1940s?

And that it would actually make a difference to game play.

When it comes to the world, you may well be right. Although I think the 97% figure was also well critiqued earlier in the thread (EDIT: including by you!).

 

[Nicolas I]

I haven't got any. It's not up to me to prove that this is wrong...

Naturally, you just make up numbers for 1940 by using 2015 figures and it's to others to prove you wrong. I often agreed with you in the past, now I wonder if you used the same doubtful methods in the past.

I provided evidence with academic sources, not just a random video of a documentary whose numbers could be inaccurate as we don't have the source provided. Many sources talk of 90% of rubber in Japanese hands, others 90% of US rubber supply cut off.

Now I have found the numbers for Liberia. They produced 5 500 tonnes in 1939 and 8 500 tons in 1941. From Africa and WW2 (William G. Clarence Smith, 2015)

Finally: This would give Liberia 27% of African production for 1942. While Belgian Congo as an average 15% for 1942-45. This would give 2 rubber in Belgian Congo if Liberia has 4 rubber as you stated before. By the way in WW2 era Liberia was producing a bit less than twice what Congo did, not 6 times as was your evaluation based on today's figures, a 300% error may I point !


PS Other african producers were Nigeria with 2 800 tonnes in 1939 and 2 000 tons in 1941, and Uganda with 800 tonnes in 1939 and 550 tons in 1941.

 

[Nicolas I]

Synthetic rubber production in the US was only 8 000 tons in 1942, but reached 750 000 tons in 1944 (90% of US needs).

So we understand why even a small production of a few thousand tons was interesting for the US in 1942 when they were in desperate need, but largely marginal by the end of the war.

 

[Nicolas I]

Finally found some figures for world rubber production 1939-1945. In The World Rubber Industry (Barlow, Jayasuriya, Suan Tan, 2014)

1941 -- Malaysia --- 544 000 tons
1941 -- Indonesia -- 660 000 tons
1941 -- Thailand ---- 4 000 tons
1941 -- India --------- 17 6000 tons
1941 -- Sri Lanka -- 102 000 tons

*1941 was the peak of production as it fell drastically under Japanese occupation.

If we add the previous figures I had for Africa and the Americas (for 1942), that gives a world production of about 1 426 000 tons of rubber.

As Japan controlled both Malaysia and Indonesia, it controlled at that moment about 84% of the world rubber production.

By 1945, US synthetic production + natural rubber from India/Sri Lanka, Africa and Americas was corresponding to 67% of 1942 world rubber production, up from 16% in 1942. Not counting other allied countries synthetic rubber production.

 

[Nicolas I]

A small additional information about rubber.

The effects of the "Rubber Reserve Company" US focus are:

It will increase the rubber production from 0 to 10 in Kentucky.

At 750 tons/1 in game rubber = 7 500 tons, this is corresponding quite perfectly with the 8 000 tons of synthetic rubber historically produced in the US in 1942 .

By 1944, US synthetic rubber production was 750 000 tons. Difficult to reproduce that in the game considering the cost of synthetic refineries.