Oil Well

On the vast shores of Lake Turkana, a steam drilling rig belched thick black smoke. Boiler workers continuously shoveled coal into the furnace chamber, while the heavy metal drill bit, driven by the engine, worked ceaselessly—rising and falling, smashing through rock strata. Workers used tools to clear the rock chips brought up by the drill into wheelbarrows, then pushed them away and piled them to one side. This was an oil survey site in East Africa.

"Mr. Karls, can we really find oil here? This is already the sixth well we've drilled this year. I feel like we're wasting our effort. This is no different from fishing a needle from the bottom of the sea," oil worker Saul asked.

Saul's team was a professional oil worker team that had studied in the Austro-Hungarian Empire oil producing areas before returning home. Three years earlier, under the Kingdom's orders, they had returned to assist East Africa in searching for oil.

Their steam drilling rig had been commissioned by East Africa from a German machinery company, shipped by sea to Mombasa, then transported by railway and road to Turkana Province.

"By my judgment, we have indeed found evidence around Lake Turkana that oil may exist here—for example, certain ancient fossils and remnants. However, we currently lack the relevant theoretical support, so if we want to extract oil here, we can only keep trying," Karls said.

"So what you mean is that, in truth, even you don't know whether Turkana Province has oil or not?" Saul asked.

"Ahem, that is indeed the case." Karls said somewhat awkwardly, "But oil is an extremely scarce resource to begin with. At present, the world's oil producing areas are basically concentrated in the United States and Eastern Europe, so it is normal if we fail to find any