Reborn in Brazil As a Plutocrat

Chapter 698 The Soviet Union and Oil

 The Americans obviously would not allow their own backyard to catch fire, so they were very wary of Brazil's renewed contact with the Soviet Union. began to further increase surveillance on Brazil.

 And tried to exert pressure on the Brazilian government through various channels in an attempt to prevent Brazil from resuming diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union.

The U.S. Ambassador to Brazil came forward to find Fang Lang again, trying to persuade the Brazilian government to stop contact with the Soviet Union through Fang Lang, a die-hard pro-American faction.

However, what Americans don’t know is that Fang Lang was behind all this happening. Without Fang Lang’s consent, the report about the US government’s interference in Brazil’s internal affairs would not have been published.

  Not to mention the intensifying public opinion war in the news media. You must know that the Brazilian Times and a series of Brazilian mainstream media are all under the control of Fangyuan Group.

The Americans are not unaware of this. Their purpose in finding Fang Lang is to use Fang Lang to influence the positions of a series of mainstream media such as the Brazilian Times, so that when reporting news, they will have some positions that are obviously biased towards the United States.

Rather than accepting editorial articles from all walks of life in a completely neutral manner and publishing them in newspapers without any modifications, as is the case now.

It has to be said that Fang Tao, under Fang Lang's words and deeds, has already mastered the technique of controlling public opinion. A special debate section was opened, allowing representatives from the pro-American and pro-Soviet sides to take turns to make their voices heard through their own media channels.

 It seems fair and impartial, without interference, allowing both sides to argue freely, but as Brazil's mainstream media, when he mentioned those pro-Soviet factions and published articles, it was actually biased.

But from the perspective of Americans, this approach of the Brazilian Times is simply ignorant of politics. How can it really allow those literati and scholars to debate freely?

 They don’t even understand the most basic news control.

Fang Lang very clearly rejected the U.S. ambassador's request, saying that this is Brazil's freedom of the press, and we cannot cover everyone's mouths and deny everyone a chance to speak.

He also said that he learned this freedom of the press from Americans! How could we not follow through to the end? This left the US ambassador speechless for a moment.

However, as the U.S. ambassador traveled around Brazil, a considerable number of Brazilians did come forward and began to clear the ground for the United States. Fang Lang took this opportunity to quietly count those who cooperated with the Americans and established complete files for them.

 But even though some people kept coming forward to clear the ground for the United States' interference in Brazil's internal affairs, they still failed to prevent Brazil and the Soviet Union from resuming diplomatic relations.

  After all, as an important ally of the United States in South America, Brazil's resumption of diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union was tantamount to a major diplomatic victory for the Soviet Union. Correspondingly, it naturally meant that it was a diplomatic failure for the United States.

The Soviet Union was naturally happy to see things that could make the United States fail. To this end, the Soviets made major concessions in the process of re-establishing bilateral relations between the two countries.

For the Brazilian government represented by President Scalia, this is naturally a rare diplomatic victory and deserves to be vigorously publicized.

Therefore, for a long period of time, various newspapers in Brazil began to focus on the benefits to Brazil of re-establishing diplomatic relations between Brazil and the Soviet Union, especially the relatively cheaper oil that could be imported from the Soviet Union.

For Brazil, where oil prices are currently soaring, this is really a shot in the arm to boost national consumer confidence. Moreover, Brazil could also export its domestically produced agricultural and sideline products to the Soviet Union.

At the same time, Brazil’s domestically developed industries were also able to export a large number of industrial products to the Soviet Union, among which rubber products were the largest.

This situation obviously touched the sensitive nerves of the U.S. government, which began to hold frequent talks with the Brazilian government and requested the Brazilian government to ban the sale of certain high-tech products from the Soviet Union, focusing on electronic products and high-precision machine tools.

This is because Brazil is now the only entity that can compete with the United States in these two fields. It is no exaggeration to say that it is even more advanced than the U.S. government.

In order to persuade the Brazilian government to ban the Soviet Union's sale of these products, the U.S. government had to offer many sincere conditions. Among them, the release of control over Brazil's refined oil products allowed Brazil's oil prices to quickly return to a normal level. .

 In fact, the reason why the United States is willing to resume control of refined oil products is because it has seen that Brazil’s Oriental Group has made frequent moves in the crude oil market in the past two years and has made great achievements.

Not to mention that after the re-establishment of diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union, oil could be imported from the Soviet Union on a large scale. The oil purchase agreement signed by Fangyuan Petrochemical and the government of the Portuguese colony of Angola alone could greatly alleviate Brazil's oil shortage.

It has to be said that in the past two years, Fangyuan Group and Ridgefield Petroleum Company jointly established Fangyuan Petrochemical, and they have indeed invested a lot of energy in the international crude oil market. They have not only begun to search for oil shares in the Persian Gulf, but also started from Dutch Shell. A large crude oil order was obtained.

 Privately, it has quietly extended its tentacles into the African crude oil market on the other side of the Atlantic, which has not yet received much attention from Western capital countries.

  Among them, the investment in the Portuguese colony of Angola was even greater. Not only did it purchase a large amount of crude oil from the Portuguese, it also began negotiations with the Portuguese government to obtain the right to exploit oil in Angola.

 Although the Portuguese government has not yet agreed to Brazil's request, most people believe that Portugal will not be able to hold on for long. After all, Brazil is not only negotiating with Portugal in the commercial field.

 Secretly, they are also in contact with the local indigenous people of Angola. As for the purpose of the contact, it is naturally self-evident. This can be seen from the increasingly restless form of Angola.

 Portuguese authorities believe that if Portugal continues to insist on not allowing Brazil to intervene in Angola's oil exploration, Brazil is very likely to support Angola's independence.

This made the Portuguese authorities very angry, but somewhat powerless. After all, Brazil's global influence during this period had actually surpassed Portugal's. Just the close ties that Brazil had established with European countries through the European aid plan alone meant that Portugal could not Comparable.

 In order to cope with Brazil’s continuous penetration into Angola, Portugal had to make Angola its overseas province earlier than in history. Reduce Angola's colonial attributes as much as possible.

 But this obviously cannot really solve the problem, because no matter how hard Portugal tries to reduce Angola’s colonial attributes, it still cannot change the fact that it is a Portuguese colony.

At this time, when Brazil appeared in Angola and acted as a troublemaker, it made Portugal very uncomfortable. What's even more disgusting is that Brazil's purpose is very clear. All it wants is oil, and it is willing to pay for the oil it mines.

Rather than plundering like the colonists, this made the locals in Angola have a very good impression of the Brazilians. They not only sent them food and clothes, but even built public facilities such as schools and bridges for them.

Under such circumstances, in February 1954, the Portuguese government had no choice but to approve Fangyuan Petrochemical’s right to exploit oil in Angola. Of course, the extracted oil requires high mineral taxes to be paid to the Portuguese government.

Fangyuan Petrochemical doesn’t care about this at all. After all, the price of extracting oil by itself, plus mineral taxes, is much lower than the price of buying oil from the Portuguese. To this end, Fangyuan Petrochemical began to build a large number of oil fields, oil pipelines, and terminals in Angola to directly transport crude oil through pipelines to ports and to Brazil.

For the sake of long-term interests, Fangyuan Petrochemical's oil extraction operations in Brazil are not predatory. They have also compensated the local people to a certain extent, not only providing a large number of jobs, but also building schools, roads and other public facilities for the local people. facility.

This gives Brazil a much better reputation in Angola than Portugal.

In addition, Fangyuan Petrochemical has also focused on opening up relations with its neighboring country Venezuela. It not only imports a large amount of crude oil from Venezuela, but also plans to build a crude oil pipeline connecting the two countries.

Of course, this pipeline was built in a very confidential manner. The purpose of this is naturally to prevent the Fangyuan Group from still being able to import oil from Venezuela after Venezuela and the United States fall out and the United States imposes an embargo on Venezuela.

The starting point of this pipeline in Brazil is the city of Cucui, Amazon State, on the border with Venezuela and Colombia in the northwest of Brazil. The starting point of the pipeline is set at this location, first of all, because it can avoid the Guyana Plateau terrain at the junction of Brazil and Venezuela to the greatest extent.

Secondly, because the garrison commander here, Major General Tabio Mike, was one of the first army officers to join Fang Lang's command. He was the one who took the initiative to find Fang Lang when he held a celebration banquet after he eliminated the Eddie Brothers rebels. Chatted with the commander of the 6th Division of the National Defense Forces, asking about jungle warfare tactics.

However, Fang Lang is not in a hurry for the construction of this pipeline, because now that Brazil and the Soviet Union have restored diplomatic relations, the Soviet Union can provide Brazil with a steady stream of high-quality crude oil, unlike Venezuela's oil, which is of poor quality and is mostly high-sulfur. Heavy oil has relatively high processing costs.

The reason why Fang Lang wants to quietly build this pipeline is to avoid the United States imposing crude oil restrictions on Brazil in the future. After all, the amount of crude oil on Brazilian land is really limited.

 Although Brazil will be able to extract a lot of crude oil from the seabed in the future as crude oil extraction technology continues to improve, this will still take a long time.

Of course, these are Fangyuan Group’s layout in the international crude oil market in the past two years.

With the re-establishment of diplomatic relations between Brazil and the Soviet Union, Brazil's domestic goods have a new huge market, which has provided a strong impetus for the further rapid development of Brazil's domestic economy.

This allowed insightful people in Brazil to further confirm the correctness of re-establishing diplomatic relations between Brazil and the Soviet Union. It also made everyone realize that Brazil should become more independent and should not follow the Americans and be at the mercy of the Americans.

In just a few months, Brazil's national independence consciousness has soared, making the U.S. government tremble with fear.

At this time, Fang Lang, who had been silent for a long time, suddenly summoned his political spokesperson Xin Shiliang to his manor in Rio de Janeiro.

Xin Shiliang felt faintly excited about Fang Lang's sudden summons. In recent years, as the strength of Fangyuan Group has further expanded, the political resources at his disposal have also become larger and larger.

If Mr. Scalia was still a little frightened and not confident when he was promoted to the president, now he is absolutely confident about it.

As long as Fang Lang agrees, he can have the Brazilian government pass any bill or policy at any time, and he can easily decide on the candidate for the Brazilian president.

Because it was already July 1954, and Brazil would soon enter the presidential election year. At this time, Fang Lang personally summoned him for an interview. Xin Shiliang's first reaction was that Fang Lang wanted to discuss with him the candidate for the next president. .

 So, he was both nervous and excited at the same time. This was the decision to choose the president of a country! Who would have thought that he, the Secretary-General of the Office of the Chairman of Fangyuan Group, who is invisible to outsiders, would be lucky enough to participate in the decision of the new president of Brazil so early?

With this mood, Xin Shiliang followed the butler Fu Bo of Fang Lang Manor and walked into Fang Lang's study.

At this time, Fang Lang was writing calligraphy with a brush on the long table in the study, practicing calligraphy. When he saw Xin Shiliang coming in, he just nodded slightly.

“Haha... Shi Liang is here, you sit down first. Uncle Fu, please give Shi Liang a cup of tea. I’ll finish writing this first.”

 Speaking, he motioned for Xin Shiliang to take a seat in the reception area in front of the desk, and casually gave instructions to his butler.

 Xin Shiliang and Fu Bo naturally have no objections to this.

 “Okay, Young Master, you are busy first!”

Soon, Fang Lang's post was finished. It has to be said that Fang Lang is now much better than before in the area of ​​calligraphy with his wife's Spring Festival training. At least it no longer looks disorganized.

Fang Lang was naturally very satisfied with this. He put down the brush and couldn't help admiring himself for a while before nodding again with a smile on his face.

“Shiliang! I heard that your work has been done very well recently!”

Fang Lang wiped his hands with a wet towel while walking out from behind the desk and sat down on the rosewood chair next to Xin Shiliang.

Although Xin Shiliang has huge influence in the political circles, he still has a very clear positioning of himself. He knows that the reason why he has such influence comes from Fang Lang's support. If Fang Lang is not satisfied with him, he can always You can replace him with another person and still do as well as him.

 So, whether he was in front of Fang Xinshan or Fang Lang, he was very humble and polite.

Hearing Fang Lang's praise for himself, he was naturally very happy. He quickly stood up to greet him, bowed slightly to Fang Lang and said:

"Thank you, Shaodong. Shiliang's meager achievements are all due to the trust and support of you and my master. If it weren't for the Shaodong's family saving me from the Japanese devil's cave, Shiliang would have turned into a corpse long ago. Withered bones.

How could I have the opportunity to live with my young master and have such a good life in Brazil like now? "

Fang Lang just laughed at Xin Shiliang's modesty, waved his hand nonchalantly, and motioned for the other party to sit down and talk.

"You don't have to be modest. I still don't know whether you are capable or not?"

 (End of this chapter)