Although Prime Minister Shen Shiming did not approve of supporting agents in South America, Li Yongji thought twice and felt that he still had to support Joseph.

The reason why Li Yongji intends to continue to support Joseph. Johnston, not for the land here, he mainly fancy the resources here, to be exact, the shallow oil of Dallas!

As a person in the future, Li Yongji knows very well that the future is the era of oil, but limited by technology, the age of oil has not yet arrived, but the so-called technical problems are not a problem at all for Li Yongji.

The key reason why Li Yongji did not introduce internal combustion machines from modern society in the past was the lack of resources, because in this era, oil has not been exploited on a large scale and has not become the world's main energy source. In this era dominated by steam, the world's main energy source is still coal, and oil is more used as a lighting oil, which is the so-called kerosene.

That's right, the main function of oil today is to use it as kerosene for lighting, and the place where the most oil is produced in the world is neither the Middle East nor the United States, but Europe!

At this time, the place that produced the most oil was Baku, which had just been incorporated into Russia, and Baku established the world's first large-scale oil refinery in 1861, specializing in refining kerosene from oil, and since then, almost 90% of the world's oil is produced in Baku, followed by Galicia in Europe, Romania and Cross in southern Poland!

It can be said that at this time, ninety percent of the oil was produced in Europe, of which ninety percent came from Russia, and nearly half of Russia's foreign exchange earnings at this time were through the sale of Baku's oil!

However, in the sixties of the nineteenth century, oil was only used as a lighting oil, and its real value was not brought into play, so it was not considered a useful strategic material, and the reason why it sold so well was that kerosene, the extract of petroleum, was brighter than candles and other oils. Therefore, it is regarded as the best lighting oil, but it is not considered irreplaceable, so most of them will not fight for oil.

On the contrary, coal has a high strategic value at this time. For example, the reason why Prussia and France have always been full of hatred, among other factors, is that the most important thing is for Alsace and Lorraine. These two regions are important because of the coal produced in these places. And the production of high-quality coal, which is necessary for the development of industry.

At this moment, it is the era of steam in full swing, coal is the protagonist, no one has realized the importance of oil, only Li Yongji knows that oil is the dominant energy in the future!

As a future person, Li Yongji does not want to develop the coal industry in China, which is not to say that it will not develop, but he does not want the coal industry to become the mainstream energy source in China.

The reason is simple. In today's world, the demand for resources such as electricity is not very large, and there is no need to vigorously develop thermal power, which is a polluting energy source, and Li Yongji can directly introduce the technology of the 21st century from modern society, so he can directly copy the advanced energy model of another world.

For example, wind power, solar power and hydropower are already enough to meet China's current demand for electricity, so there is no need to vigorously exploit the coal industry.

He has experienced the smog era, but he knows that coal pollution is terrible, and he does not want the world's China to embark on this path.

But. Li Yongji also knows that with China's current technological foundation, it will take a long time to fully understand new energy sources such as wind power and solar energy, and during this period. If you want to get a powerful alternative energy source, it has to be oil.

Yes, although oil is also a polluting non-renewable energy source, it is much less polluting than coal and much more energy efficient.

Think about it, in another plane. The internal combustion engine has always been the mainstream power that occupies the world, and other power can only be the little brother compared to this, so since Li Yongji is going to introduce the technology of another time and space, there is no reason not to use the internal combustion engine technology, so the need for oil is the top priority.

Moreover, oil can not only be used as a power oil for various internal combustion engines, oil can also extend to many related industries, such as plastics, rubber, detergents and even explosives and other related products, all need to use oil!

Therefore, oil is a real strategic material, and for a long time, although it is not possible to say that it is irreplaceable, it is definitely the most cost-effective multi-purpose resource.

Then, since he knows that oil is the blood of the future world, Li Yongji has no reason not to develop the oil industry.

But to develop the oil industry, there must be oil first!

In this regard, Li Yongji has a great advantage, because he can use the resource distribution points of later generations to find oil according to the map!

At present, the best to exploit, and the easiest to obtain, must be the oil of Dallas, in addition to this place, although there is oil in other places, but it is either not easy to extract, or the transportation is not convenient, or the oil is not good, it is not suitable to be the first choice of oil extraction.

For example, the California region, although it also produces oil, but it is mainly in the continental shelf, and the technical difficulty required is not much in the 21st century, but in the 60s of the 19th century, it was a bit too difficult.

As for the Philippines, not to mention those places in Daqing and Siberia, although the oil production point can be determined, the difficulty of mining is not much easier than that of the continental shelf of California.

In short, due to technical problems, Li Yongji has not extracted oil by himself, but has purchased crude oil from Europe through trade, of which Russia is his largest supplier.

After buying crude oil, Li Yongji hoarded most of it, and used a small part as experimental supplies in Area 110 to contribute to the technical reserves of the petrochemical industry.

Because the petrochemical industry is a priority project for Li Yongji, whether it is technical data, experimental supplies or various financial inputs, they are all given priority, so the progress of the Petrochemical Research Institute is also a rapid progress, and various petrochemical products emerge in an endless stream.

In other words, the petrochemical technology of the Chinese Empire has reached the level of the forties and fifties of the twentieth century, and it is not too difficult to use crude oil to extract gasoline, diesel and other petrochemical products, but it is nothing more than a problem of pollution size and utilization rate.

On the contrary, the oil exploitation technology, although the progress is not small, but compared with the petrochemical industry, it is far behind.

The fundamental reason is that petrochemical industry is simpler, because it involves more chemistry. You only need to know the specific technical indicators and production methods, and you can draw a scoop according to the gourd, and quickly simulate it.

The oil extraction technology is different, and this technology is more involved in machinery manufacturing. In this regard, the Chinese empire is still a shortcoming.

Thus, although the chemical research institutes of the empire were already able to produce such products as gasoline, diesel, detergent, rubber, etc., many of which had even reached the level of the sixties of the twentieth century, the mining technology could only reach the level of the twenties of the twentieth century.

Specifically, domestic mining teams have been able to manufacture their own drilling equipment. But with those self-made drilling equipment, they can only drill shallow oil fields, and they can't do more complex oil fields!

Obviously, due to the relatively poor exploitation technology and the problems of infrastructure, they are unable to exploit the domestic oil fields, and even if they can, Li Yongji does not want to exploit them, and it is better to keep those things for later exploitation.

This is not to say that Li Yongji wants to keep the domestic oil. He doesn't have a sense of miser, he just thinks that with the current technology, reluctantly extracting domestic oil will definitely cause a great waste, and the cost will not be much less.

Anyway, the history of managing oil extraction is easy first and then difficult. They all exploit the easy-to-recover oil fields first, and then exploit the hard-to-recover oil fields.

There is no doubt that the easiest to mine in the world is abundant in reserves. And the place where the oil is better must be the Middle East, such as Saudi Arabia and Kuwait later.

But the problem is that although there is no actual state to rule in the Middle East now, it is only a nominally Ottoman Empire, but the infrastructure there is too poor. It's too expensive to mine there.

As for the Philippines and those places in Siberia, there is no need to consider it, and the difficulty coefficient is greater than that of Daqing Oilfield.

In the end, Li Yongji chose to choose, and only Dallas was the most reliable!

The city of Dallas was founded in 1856, and until 1864, it was just a small town in Texas with a population of just over 1,000, mainly livestock and cotton farming, especially the cotton industry.

Of course, only Li Yongji knows that the most important thing in Dallas at this time is not the cotton, nor the cattle and sheep, but the black oil underground!

Yes, Dallas is a famous shallow oil producing area in the United States, where the oil is not only shallow and easy to extract, but also has good oil quality, and is an excellent light oil, whether it is extracted or refined, it is relatively easy.

As early as when Li Yongji developed the city of Hollywood, Los Angeles, he had an idea, that is, to build a railway from the Red Fort of Hollywood to Dallas, and then extract oil in Dallas, and use the railway to transport the oil from Dallas to the Red Fort of Hollywood, and then transshipment to China through the Red Fort.

For this reason, Li Yongji even planned the railway line, and he wanted to completely copy it according to the railway plan of the United States in another time and space.

But after a closer look, Li Yongji found that this plan was full of difficulties, not that it couldn't be done, the key was that the cost performance was not too high.

Because it is more cost-effective to take the port of Houston from Dallas, and then load it from the port of Houston and ship it directly to China than to build a railroad, then extract oil, and transport the local oil to Hollywood by train to China.

The reason is very simple, whether it is now or in the future, the capacity of trains can not be compared with ships, especially for transporting bulk materials, the advantages of shipping are quite obvious, and the cost advantage is quite prominent.

Especially now, there are not many Chinese in California, and forcibly building a railway under the condition of a small population is actually a wasteful behavior, not only wasting railway consumables, but also seriously wasting manpower, and the time spent is also very long, which is completely worth the loss.

Therefore, Li Yongji has long wanted to take Houston and Dallas, but these places are the territory of Texas, and Texas is the territory of the United States in the south, and Li Yongji has no excuse to invade here for a while.

Originally, Li Yongji planned to give up here for the time being, and talk about it later, anyway, there are places where oil is produced, but now that Joseph. Johnston had the ambitions to get involved in the West, so it was a different story.

Although on the surface, Joseph. Johnston only wanted to control the lower Mississippi River, that is, to take over the cities that Li Yongji had ceded, but only a glance at the map and the situation in the Confederate States at this time could be found. These places are not only economically developed, but more importantly, strategically prominent.

Because once the lower Mississippi River is controlled, it is equivalent to cutting off the east-west connection of the Union State, especially Texas from the outside world.

And what about Texas at this time. Although it seems to be a strong people, it is sparsely populated, and there are basically no decent troops, although it has also fought several battles with the federal army, but the results can only be described as dismal. There is no comparison with the Texas West cowboys of later generations.

In fact, in the Civil War, Texas was a typical border state, not to mention the vast land area, but the development progress was not large, before 1845, it was still an independent republic, with a population of only 70,000, and even in 1864, the total population of the state was only 100,000. Not as large as the population of California.

Among them, Austin is the capital and the main population gathering area of Texas, at this time the population of this city alone is more than 30,000, followed by San Antonio, with a population of more than 30,000, and the rest of the population is distributed in Galveston, Harrisburg, Brazos and other areas.

As for Houston, it was nowhere near as tall as Galveston, and in 1864 the entire city of Houston was populated together. There will be no more than 5,000 people, and if it were to be replaced by China, let alone cities, not even counties. At most, it is a township.

Therefore, Li Yongji's original plan was to spend money to buy the Port of Houston in the name of the Eastern Bloc before leaving, and then buy Dallas.

It's not that difficult. Because Texas had a lot of autonomy at this time, and the government of this state was the poorest state in the southern United States, as long as it was willing to spend money, buying land was not a matter at all.

Anyway, whether it's Houston or Dallas, it's just starting out in a small town, or a village, and it's nothing. As long as a large area of land is enclosed in these places, turned into private estates, and two new towns are built on this basis, it is not a problem at all.

However, although it is simple to buy land for construction, it is a problem to protect it in the later stage, after all, Texas is notoriously poor, and the so-called poor mountains and bad waters produce bad people, and it is the same in Texas in this era.

Therefore, in order to develop the oil of Dallas and build its own port of Houston, it is necessary to invest not only a little force, but more importantly, a strong army must be invested here to ensure the safety here.

Originally, Li Yongji had a good idea, and he sent someone to contact the governor of Texas early to discuss the purchase of a large piece of land between Houston and Dallas, but the result was a big surprise.

Li Yongji never expected that the governor of Texas would be so greedy that although he agreed to sell the land, the asking price was quite high, and he asked for 1 million Chinese yuan as soon as he opened his mouth, which was beyond Li Yongji's psychological price.

In fact, Li Yongji can't afford that money, but he feels that if he pays so easily, he will be regarded as a wronged person, and it will also make people think that the place he bought is too important, and it will not be good if it arouses the covetousness of others.

Therefore, according to Li Yongji's original intention, he directly gave up the matter of buying land, and then before leaving New Orleans and withdrawing troops to return home, he took the time to take the troops to walk around Austin to scare and scare the other party, and let the other party know how many pounds and taels he had.

But now that Li Yongji has changed his mind, he feels that the consequences of doing so are not small, it is far better to support a local warlord, and then use the power of this warlord to threaten Dezhou, and then use the protection of this warlord to build a concession.

In this way, the hatred of the metropolis was taken by Joseph. Johnston pulls away, but the Chinese will not suffer too much trouble, which can save a lot of trouble for future plans.

When the Panama Canal was not yet opened, a remote area like Houston, far away from China, was in the early stage of construction, and it was quite difficult to develop rapidly without Li Yongji's golden finger, because the distance was too far, and China was destined not to invest too much force in construction, and could only rely heavily on the locals.

At this time, supporting a strong warlord in the vicinity as a backer can not only ensure the stability of the region, but also provide sufficient labor and resources, and the cost performance is the most prominent.

That is to say, as long as they are willing to spend some money to support a local warlord and let the local warlord help build a concession for the Chinese, the Chinese only need to send a very small number of managers to get a city quickly.

So how much is Li Yongji's investment? Nothing more than some seized obsolete weapons, plus a batch of Chinese dollar banknotes, which are insignificant compared to the help that will be received.

To put it bluntly, Li Yongji wants to support the agent, because the drunkard does not mean to drink, not because of the trade market in the southern United States, but because of the oil resources here, and he is planning in advance for the future oil.

Li Yongji wants to take advantage of the fact that the other party is now asking for him, and at a very small price, to obtain a resource production area that is very important to him as a concession.

When the infrastructure from Dallas to Houston is built by the locals at a very low cost, Li Yongji can officially send troops to these cities, and at that time, these places will really become his own territory, and he can plunder the local oil resources unscrupulously, is there a better way than this? (To be continued.) )