Petrochemical products and agribusiness
Headquarters: Moscow, Russia
Regional Offices: Toshkent, St. Petersburg, Tokyo, Seoul, Beijing, Manila, Ho Chi Min City, Havana, Night City
Chief Officers: Central Committee (actual membership unknown)
Employees: 245,000
Background
By 1997, the Neo-Soviets had the capacity to recover only a fraction of the vast fields of oil lying under their federation. After a massive program of expansion and modernization, KeroSov, the previous state-run oil industry, became strong enough to break away from the oligarchs of the Federal Central Committee and become the Neo-Sovetskiy Neftyanoy Kombinat (Neo-Soviet Oil Combine aka SovOil). Now sitting on top of the world's largest remaining oil reservoirs, SovOil's oligarch leaders know that the oil won't flow forever. But they're still a wealthy and powerful Corporation, with unmatched access to an incredibly valuable commodity, plus a variety of other products and industries. Unfortunately for them, developments like Biotechnica's CHOOH2 have rapidly undermined their strategic dominance.
In the mid-2010s SovOil and Petrochem fell into a disagreement over territories in the South China Sea, leading to a short, but savage, war that grievously wounded both Corporations. The result was that Petrochem decided to concentrate its efforts towards emerging CHOOH2 fuel technology, while SovOil was forced to dedicate its own to exploring the untapped oilfields of the long untouched Siberian region. But both sides knew that they would eventually meet again in a final match-up.
The 4th Corporate War has only delayed that reckoning. SovOil's Central Committee is already moving the pieces around in their long game, making plans that will carry the company into the next step of its evolution, when oil is no longer their prime source of income. The first step toward ensuring the company's survival is diversification. SovOil is the major economic force in the Neo-Soviet Union and much of Eastern Europe, and the company has a guaranteed market share in these areas. The more services and goods SovOil can provide the people of these regions, the better off the company will be when the oil runs out. SovOil is already active in mining, shipbuilding, research, and CHOOH2 agriculture. It's just beginning to move into aircraft, computers, synthetics, CHOOH2 power systems, and general agriculture. By 2050, the board hopes to have a product base diverse enough to fight the coming war with their Petrochem rivals, who have yet to fully recover from the chaos of the last Corporate War.
Face: Anatoly Novaragov
Large, loud, and ostentatious, Anatoly looks exactly like the Western idea of a Russian oligarch. He wears bright and expensive shirts open to the navel, drapes himself in gold jewelry, and favors expensive cars, strong alcohol, and beautiful women. But those who know him well recall an earlier Anatoly: a rather faceless bureaucrat who used to wear shabby suits and scrupulously horded his money to the point of miserliness. This has a lot of important people wondering, is this the real Anatoly Novaragov going through a midlife crisis? Is this a clever ruse put on by the Central Committee to distract its Petrochem enemies? Or could it be an actor taking the place of a Novaragov long ago buried behind the dacha of a powerful political rival on the Committee itself? No one knows, and no one's talking. Even Anatoly's ex-wife, Irina, has been quiet on the subject, although a astronomically generous divorce settlement may have had a lot to do with her reticence.
What hasn't changed about the current Anatoly Novaragov (whatever his provenance) is his reputation for ruthlessness. Even before he took on his peacock finery, he was well known as a cunning operator who leveraged a number of connections with the old KGB and the fearsome Bratva (Russian mafia) to make enemies and rivals disappear without a trace. Or to sometimes resurface months later as collections of unidentifiable body parts liberally strewn in parks all over his native city of St. Petersburg. Don't let the flashy side of SovOil's "Face" fool you; he can play nasty with the best of them.
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