Petrochem: The Texas Megacorp That Keeps the World Running on Wheat

A wheat license that paid off#

Petrochem begins as Parker Petrochemicals, an oil company run by a Texas family. When the wells dry up, Louis Parker bets on a license from a young Italian firm called Biotechnica, which gives Parker the right to grow a custom wheat that ferments into CHOOH2 fuel. The money comes from an investor named Ellen Trieste, who ends up holding the power of life and death over the company.

For five years it looks like a mistake. Then Ford, General Motors, Toyota and Honda announce CHOOH2-burning engines, and Parker is the only company in the US allowed to produce it. The family goes from stranded oilmen to the people supplying the world's fuel.

What Petrochem is in 2020#

By 2020 Petrochem is the world's largest farm corporation and top CHOOH2 producer, and one of the biggest oil producers next to SovOil. It controls millions of acres of arable land across the U.S. With oil running out, remaining fossil fuel mostly goes into plastics and synthetics, and Petrochem has more fertile oilfields than anybody.

It ranks behind several other megacorps in size, valued at 381 billion eurodollars. But it has no big banking arm and few debts, so it is in a stronger position than some larger rivals. Its wealth is in things you can touch.

It also loses a war. In 2010 the South China Sea conflict ends with SovOil dominant in oil, and Petrochem has taken a hit. Inside the company, the Parker camp and the Trieste camp are heading for a boardroom war. Nothing ends a feud like a quarterly report.

The long game with Biotechnica#

Petrochem hates that it pays for its own fuel. It chafes under the CHOOH2 license, and observers expected it to squash the smaller Biotechnica and stop paying. That never happened because Biotechnica holds viruses that can destroy all known varieties of the wheat. What it created, it can end.

So the two stay cordial. Biotechnica gives its biggest licensee special deals, and Petrochem keeps selling to its industrial customers, including Arasaka and Militech, at bulk discounts. Being the gas station for a corporate war is a good business.

Post-war and 2077#

Petrochem is never directly in the Fourth Corporate War, but defending its wells and fields from sporadic SovOil attacks drains it, and it enters the post-war period depleted. It spends heavily on private forces and ends up with an army fit for a small country. Continental Brands, a spin-off formed after the war, takes half its old CHOOH-4U stations.

In 2077 it is still the largest CHOOH2 maker, with a tower in Corporate Plaza in Night City. But droughts in 2076 hit soy and corn, CHOOH2's primary inputs, and yields hit record lows. Brazil and Colombia, home to its biggest plantations, consider seizing harvests to calm famine and unrest. Lobbyists stop it, but the stock still drops 11 percent by the end of the year.

CEO Lars Muhammad answers with a plan to buy a million acres of farmland in the Soviet Union, in Kazakh, Turkmen and Dagestani territories.

Fixer's notes#

The Petrochem Home Towers in Irving are two angled towers built to look like each other's reflection, with Old West and oil-industry photos in the lobbies. Nothing about it is subtle, which makes it a good model for a corporate location in a game: mirrored, loud and obsessed with its own history.

Opinion: Petrochem is the corporation that tells you how the world's economy works. Not through an army, but by being the gas station. If the harvests fail, the lights go out. Megacorporations puts it next to the rest.