Petrochem’s bread and butter is CHOOH2, the synthetic alcohol that has become the world’s standard combustible fuel. They are responsible for 60% of the world’s supply. The coporation remains on the cutting edge of chemistry and materials research and production. And by virtue of owning a huge fraction of the world’s arable land, it is also among the world’s largest agricultural concerns.
In 2015, back when oil was still flowing freely, Biotechnica was developing an alcohol based replacement fuel. While many companies were doing the same thing by trying to find the right plant to process from, Biotechnica was into genetic engineering, trying to create the perfect plant. They suceeded with Triticum Vulgaris Megasuavis, a high sugar grain that could be fermented into a alcohol based fuel.
Because the oil was still flowing, few fuel companies had any interest in the new product. One exception was Parker Petrochemicals, which nearly bankrupted itself acquiring the exclusive license to grow the crop in the US, and snatching up every available acre of farmland to grow it.
Five years later, oil supplies began to dwindle. Automakers that had scoffed at producing alcohol based vehicles quickly became interested in a gas alternative. The answer was CHOOH2 the synthetic alcohol created by Biotechnica. The only company in the US producing it was Parker Petrochemicals.
By 2022, CHOOH2 was rapidly becoming the new fuel standard, and Parker Petrochemicals controlled 60% of the world’s supply. The increased cashflow allowed the company to expand into other areas of chemical research as well as purchasing some of the few remaining sources of oil, which as supplies dwindled, was becoming a very valuable commodity. Parker tried to get its hands on the largest remaining source of oil which was in Siberia and the South China Sea. They lost out to SovOil for control of the region, and the great corporate rivaly was born.
The Parker family was by this time a minority shareholder in the company having had to sell shares to fund its operations over the previous five years. To reflect this, the company name was changed to Petrochemical Associates International or Petrochem for short.
In 2023, the competition with SovOil for control of the remaining oil fields turned violent and the Second Corporate War began. The war lasted over two years and ended with Petrochem being reduced to a distant second in oil production. It mattered little though, as CHOOH2 continued to be its major cash cow.
Petrochem is based in Dallas with offices in Washington, San Francisco, Night City, ,New York, Chicago, Tokyo, London, Hamburg, Hong Kong, Rome, and Sydney. They have over 400,000 employees world wide and employ 50,000 soldiers to protect their fuel assets.