Second Corporate War

The Second Corporate War was a large-scale armed conflict fought between April 2008 and August 2010. The main combatants were two oil corporations, SovOil and Petrochem.

The Conflict
In 2006, SovOil began producing CHOOH2, an alcohol-based fuel most commonly used to power vehicles. Petrochem, the primary producer of CHOOH2, offered to supply SovOil with updated technology to help SovOil drill, pump, and create other fuels from untapped oil resources in Siberia. This offer came with the condition that Petrochem receive partial drilling rights.

Shortly before the papers were to be signed on the Petrochem-SovOil partnership, SovOil engineers announced that they had developed drilling technology that made the deal unnecessary, and SovOil cancelled the deal at the last minute. The two corporations experienced a rift.

In 2007, both companies began to expand into the South China Sea. This created tension and, eventually, boiled over into the beginning of the second corporate war.

The war started when the Sabina Bravo, an offshore platform owned by Petrochem, exploded. Petrochem accused SovOil of planting an explosive device on the platform, which kicked off a series of intense and public verbal battles between diplomats representing each corporation. After communication broke down, Petrochem launched the first military attack by ordering their own military divers to plant explosives on a SovOil platform in revenge. The platform was destroyed, and a full-scale conflict ensued.

SovOil had most of the initial success in the war, though both sides effectively crippled each other in just a few weeks in directly targeting and destroying oil facilities. Each company lost approximately 75% of their oil facilities within the first few weeks of the war.

Partway through the war, Petrochem was able to briefly gain the advantage over SovOil by capturing the Spratly Island chain and assassinating Anatoly Novikovo, the CEO and founder of SovOil, using planes loaned from the government of Malaysia.

Despite SovOil's losses, the corporation regrouped and was eventually able to overpower Petrochem. SovOil was able to repeatedly repel Petrochem's attacks. In October of 2009, Petrochem's forces ended up severely weakened after several failed attacks and SovOil took de facto control of the South China Sea.

In the end, it was discovered that the destruction of Petrochem's Sabina Bravo off-shore platform - the event that convinced Petrochem to go to war with SovOil - was in fact an accident that SovOil was not responsible for.

Legacy
Like the First Corporate War, the public and analysts were surprised by the intense nature of the conflict, which was unlike anything seen before.

Additionally, both sides had broken national and international laws throughout the conflict. Though both sides used the armies of Pacific Rim nations against each other, they also went as far as to depose governments and install new ones. SovOil particularly ignored the demands of nation-states and did as it pleased - SovOil was later forced to pay reparations to some nations.

Finally, as oil refineries were a primary target during the conflict, the war left the southern part of the Pacific Rim extremely polluted, with conditions being described as 'all but uninhabitable' in the year 2020.