It is equally certain that interdiction of coal and oil imports will have a disproportionate effect on the provinces bordering the South China Sea. Aside from the inevitable electricity shortages, oil interdiction will idle every refinery in the four southeastern provinces, taking 20 percent of the country’s total refinery capacity offline without any need to damage those refineries.

From an interdiction standpoint, it is easiest to interrupt foreign flows, whether they flow by sea or by pipeline. For coal, overseas interdiction is nevertheless worth the effort because of the disproportionate impact on the coastal provinces. Of course, 100 percent import interdiction cannot be achieved overnight and may never be achieved at all, given the willingness and capability of neighboring countries to revert to rail imports, however marginal. Interdiction of 90 percent of oil imports is not only achievable, but impossible to offset through other transport means.

This will force the PRC to rely on its strategic reserve almost immediately and cause a massive reallocation of fuel use requirements. It may also have localized impacts on military forces, as it will be much harder to supply PLAN and PLAAF units based in the south. Only two of the strategic petroleum reserve depots are in the south, comprising less than 20 percent of the SPR.

Additional effects on internal energy transport are another element of the strategy. The inshore effort is intended to disrupt both military and energy logistics. In the case of coal, 30 percent of domestic coal transport is by river and coastal traffic, which is especially vulnerable to mine warfare. Chinese short-haul shipping is a commercial and not a state enterprise, and civilian shipowners have been traditionally unwilling to risk their vessels in hostile waters. A ship sunk at a loading berth blocks the facility effectively and for a significant duration.

Infrastructure degradation will affect both water and rail transport, especially if rail bridges are dropped into major waterways. The Danube River was effectively closed to large traffic for five years after the Novi Sad bridges were dropped in Allied Force. Damage to pipeline pumping stations, rail tunnels, bridges and refineries will be time-consuming and difficult to repair, and in the case of refineries, suitable equipment may not be available domestically.

The secondary effects on electricity production will likewise ripple through the transportation and industrial sectors.

Electricity shortages caused by oil or coal interdiction will affect the train network; refineries starved of either feedstock or electricity cannot refine and pipelines without electricity do not move oil. Reduced diesel production will affect the non-electric portion of the rail network plus both maritime and truck transport, while at the same time diesel will be in demand for emergency power generation.

Reprioritization of limited freight transport will affect industry (itself starved for power) and agriculture directly, as well as disrupting distribution of industrial or agricultural products. Local surpluses and shortages of fuel, coal and electricity are certain to occur, further complicating distribution challenges.

Similar effects can be directly observed from a single industrial accident. In November of 2013 a Sinopec pipeline in Huangdao, Shandong Province exploded, killing over 60 people and shutting the pipeline down. This caused production cutbacks in two nearby refineries, a reallocation of refinery production company-wide, and a shutdown of the Qingdao oil terminal for a week. Tankers were diverted to other ports, causing offshore backups because of the lack of available offload facilities. Environmental damage took many weeks to clean up and the oil berths were out of commission for months.

All of these cascading events were the result of the equivalent of a single weapon hit and the pipeline was never repaired.

The duration of any campaign is difficult to predict. The amount of military storage for refined fuel remains an unknown factor. Similarly, there are absolute limits on refinery production, rail transport, and truck movement of refined products, none of which are known, perhaps even to the PRC government. Finally, the wartime consumption of jet fuel by the PLAN and PLAAF is largely conjectural. Further complicating any assessment is the fact that turbine-powered ships can and do run on marine diesel fuel, which is still refined distillate, but is closer to diesel fuel in composition than kerosene.

Wrap-up

A counter-logistics campaign, fought from long range where possible, is intended to provide a strategy that avoids China’s strengths in air defense and relies on a very limited target list focused on targets that are neither hardened nor mobile.

Instead of matching technologically advanced military forces against like systems in terrain favorable to China, it is intended to fight only those units that come out to fight and leave many of their advantages behind.

This is a deliberate offset strategy, tailored to China, which avoids the pitfalls inherent in the misapplication of older air power theory and takes the specific characteristics of the adversary into account. It is also a strategy that could be executed today, with today’s force structure, posture and today’s personnel.

The Pentagon could certainly improve in all of those areas, but the execution of an SI campaign will not need to wait for the development of new technologies and it does not hinge on transient vulnerabilities.

Our experience in World War II demonstrated the effectiveness of our efforts to successfully interdict the Japanese transportation systems and oil storage and production facilities. The Pacific Strategic Bombing Survey noted in retrospect that our efforts were inefficiently directed — if we had possessed accurate intelligence about the nature of Japan’s logistics network, we might have rearranged our targeting priorities to increase our effects and shortened our timelines.

With respect to China, we do have significant knowledge about the energy sector, precisely because it is involved directly in foreign trade and a great deal of data is available. Instead of attempting to fight a generic “near peer” adversary with a template drawn from Desert Storm, we should be planning to apply a counter-logistics strategy against a real adversary, with the attendant national characteristics, vulnerabilities and geography.

Image: Flickr.