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In late February, most of the African land, grassland areas and desert areas have already entered the dry and hot dry season. Only the entire narrow coastal zone of the Gulf of Guinea has a hot and humid climate with obvious characteristics of tropical rainforests.

It gave birth to endless dense jungles.

Drake, Mamba and Crumah, which is rich in crude oil, all belong to the Northwestern Province of Akwa, the Maritime Province in the southeast where the capital of Akwa, Pemé is located, and the capital area of ​​Cotonou Port and Porto No in western Benin.

Places such as Hufu and Lonta in the west of Kanem are located in this narrow coastal rainforest area.

The Northwest Province of Akwa - a province, with a geographical scope comparable to the eastern prefecture-level cities in the country, is rich in energy and mineral resources, which have been developed successively since the colonial period. It is also the most developed area of ​​Akwa industry and mining, a colonial

The narrow-gauge railway built during the period passed through the dense jungle, connecting Krumah, Mangba, Drake and other places. It also brought crude oil from Krumah and iron and coal from Mangba to Pemei Port.

Ship it to all parts of the world in exchange for precious foreign exchange for Akwa.

When the train pulled by the steam locomotive arrived at Drake, a heavy rain poured down, and the simple platform and iron shed were rattled by the raindrops.

There is a row of station buildings built fifty or sixty years ago. The cement-painted walls are covered with black moss. They look old and worn out, but they still stand in the gray rainstorm.

Extending from the platform, you can see densely packed dilapidated shacks on both sides of the train tracks.

The downpour cannot stop the local Banxitou children from having fun in the rain naked.

This is the center of Drake's most prosperous town. From a glance, there are not many old buildings with more than five or six floors, almost all of which have a strong colonial style.

The iron shed on the train platform was too narrow, and it was windy and rainy. Not long after Cao Mo and the others got off the train, their bodies were splashed by raindrops that drifted in.

There is a barbed wire fence between the platform and the slums outside, but it does not prevent locals from running directly along the railway. Some sell things to passengers entering the station in the rain, and some come directly to beg.

Da Kuski led several strong bodyguards armed with firearms to stop these people, preventing them from harassing Cao Mo and the others.

After waiting for a quarter of an hour, four off-road vehicles drove into the platform. In Kabuja, Xiao Jun got off and walked over in the heavy rain.

Seeing Cao Mo and the others in front of the platform, soaked by the rain that had drifted in, Kabuga said guiltily:

"Today's rain has continued from early morning to now and has not stopped - a bridge entering the town was suddenly washed away by the flood. We traveled an extra 20 kilometers from the north to get here. We already knew that we should arrive at the station in advance.

Come and wait for you. The roads here are worse than those in Lonta. I doubt that anyone has repaired them in the past ten years. Did you have a smooth journey here?"

"It went well. The windows of the carriage we were staying in were all intact. We almost suffocated to death." The iron shed was rattled by raindrops. Cao Mo shouted to Kabuga and Xiao Jun.

They talk.

In Kabuja, Xiao Jun had long warned him that taking a train to Deregu would never be a good experience, but the copper concentrate in Deregu would have to be transported to Pemme Port using this narrow-gauge railway built during the colonial period.

, he wanted to experience this route personally no matter what.

Before entering the Drake, the weather had been fine. The hot and humid carriage was filled with passengers and there was no air conditioning. Unfortunately, the windows were all closed intact, not allowing a breath of wind to come in. The local Akan people exuded a strong aroma.

I feel that the two-hour drive was a complete ordeal.

Cao Mo jokingly talked about the experience of taking the train this time and said with a smile: "We just suffered for more than two hours - it's much easier than the hardships you have to endure here these days!"

The new exploration site is located in the Drake Plain area, very close to the town and across a small river. Cao Mo and the others contacted Kabuga and Xiao Jun by satellite phone more than half an hour in advance, but they went around from the north.

Twenty kilometers away, it still took a full hour to get here. Looking at the mud on the bodies of the four off-road vehicles, we can see that Drake's road is not worth looking forward to.

Kabuga suggested that Cao Mo find a hotel to stay in the town first:

"The campground is too simple. With today's heavy rain, the tents are full of mud, and mosquitoes are like grasshoppers. No matter how hot it is at night, everyone can only wrap their heads and faces with sheets and sleep - there is a hotel in the town.

It’s a manor left over from the 1960s and 1970s. It’s very neat and tidy. It has generators and fans, and the conditions are pretty good.”

"It's still early, let's go to the camp first! Starlie will meet us directly at the camp later!"

Cao Mo had already read all the information he needed to read at home and on the way. He also kept in touch with Kabuga and Xiao Jun almost every day, except to see the sampling situation of the exploration wells on the spot.

The signing of the acquisition agreement for Beiku Cement Plant and Xintaihua Grinding Station could not be postponed. Song Yuqing finally stayed in China temporarily to follow the matter, and Cao Mo took Zhou Han on the journey back to Africa.

He rushed to Akva yesterday, stayed overnight in Pemme, and met with Juan Mantar, Brahm, Garon Targaryen and others, but he did not mention Drake's copper and gold for the time being.

Regarding the mine, I took the train to Drake early this morning.

It has been confirmed that there is a copper-gold mine underground in Drake, but its scale cannot yet be determined. Currently, exploration personnel from the Oguta and Ibogu mining areas are being urgently transferred to speed up the exploration of Drake's mineral resources.

Cao Mo also asked Stari to take over the security task of an oil field from Kruno at a low price, and temporarily arranged all the security personnel of Augusta to Kruno, which is adjacent to Drake.

This is actually so that Drake can have enough security forces to get support.

If he had applied directly to the Akwa authorities to transfer hundreds of armed bodyguards to Drake, no one would have guessed that he would have discovered something beyond imagination in Drake.

As for the exploration teams from Oguta and Ibogu, they will not be alarmed. After all, the Ibogu Mineral Exploration Company was established less than a year ago and does not have much manpower and equipment in total.

When the heavy rain subsided a little, Cao Mo and the others set off directly from the station, driving through a bumpy road on an almost indistinguishable flooded cement road, and it took them more than an hour to reach the camp.

For ten days, there was no construction of the camp at all. A few tents were set up on high ground to provide shelter from the wind and rain. The surroundings were overgrown with grass, and a rusty well tower stood in the wasteland mixed with mud.

This is the well frame left by Stru Company ten years ago. There is a barbed wire fence surrounding the exploration area, but the wire fence is full of holes, or has collapsed together with the steel pipe columns.

After Stru's withdrawal, the exploration area and the company's other assets in the Drake area, including an office building in the town, were expropriated by Akwa National Oil and Mining Group.

Akwa National Petroleum and Mining Group once set up a gold mining company specifically in Drake, trying to use existing equipment to mine gold underground in Drake, but with little success.

The gold mining company was disbanded not long after, leaving only one office in the town to manage the entire mining area and these equipments. This office did not have many people, but Akwa National Petroleum and Mining Group and Cao Mo conducted exploration and later mineral mining.

The subject of cooperation.

When Kabuja personally led the team to enter Drake, Amududi, a former geological engineer of Stru Company, was working as a mine warden in this office.

A large amount of equipment was abandoned in the suburbs of Drake and in the mountains that were once the main mining areas. It had long been rusty. Fortunately, it was not dismantled and sold as scrap metal by the nearby villagers. Kabja brought people over to replace it.

The mechanical, electrical, wiring and other facilities can still be used reluctantly.

Otherwise, Kabuga and the others would not have been able to collect shallow ore samples in such a short period of time.

At the camp, Cao Mo met Almoududi, a former geological engineer of Stru Company, and his two sons.

Amududi is a descendant of British colonists. Perhaps due to the exposure to the sun and rain, he looks very old even though he is not yet fifty years old.

His wife is a local Akan woman, and his two sons inherit more of the characteristics of the local Akan people, but they are still regarded as descendants of colonists by the locals and are ostracized.

Although the industry and mining industry in Drake was still quite backward in the eyes of Cao Mo and others, and the towns did not look like cities at all, there were still a large number of unemployed farmers coming from surrounding villages and even remote areas to seek livelihood.

The population of Drake's town has doubled in the past ten years, and large slums have been built on both sides of the Usan River between the exploration area and the town.

Almoududi was imprisoned for two years because of his senior position at the Stru Gold Mining Company. The family property and houses accumulated from his previous employment at the Stru Gold Mining Company were expropriated by the authorities - now

A family of six relied on his meager salary and lived in a simple shack on the east bank of the river.

When Cao Mo rushed to the camp, Amududi's two sons ran over and said that their house had just been washed away by the rising river, and many people had been swept away by the river...

When Cao Mo left the station, he went directly around a relatively solid concrete bridge in the north. He didn't expect that the heavy rain would bring such serious damage to both sides of the lower reaches of the Wusang River.

Cao Mo would never be stingy with useful people, especially the materials provided by Amududi and his unremitting research over the years, which are precious treasures that are immeasurable.

He asked Xiao Jun to arrange for someone to take Amududi's son to the river and bring his family to the camp and settle them there.

Almoududi is very unattractive, even worse than the local old farmers. He speaks in a submissive and unhelpful manner. It takes him a long time to understand what he is saying. Most people would not have the patience to communicate with him, and he does not have the confidence to do so.

Communicate with outsiders.

However, Cao Mo could feel that he was quite confident in his research.

Almoududi had told officials at Akwa National Oil and Mining Group's office in Drake about this matter before, but his identity and poor communication skills made him ridiculed.

The more critical point is that before and after the coup launched by the Saiwei authorities, they incited ethnic hatred to the extreme. The descendants of the colonists were completely overthrown and knocked to the ground in a short period of time. The country's industrial, commercial, financial and other industries have emerged in the fields of technology and management.

Serious faults.

No official in the Akwa National Petroleum and Mining Group's office in Drake could even understand Almoududi's research theories, let alone take them seriously.

No new pumping equipment has been installed in the exploration well yet. Heavy rains have flooded the exploration well, and even the exploration well frame is half submerged in muddy water. Naturally, there is nothing interesting to see at the site. According to Almoududi’s theoretical research, they need to pump water along the Usan River.

Only by drilling eight to ten deep exploration wells in an area of ​​50 kilometers downstream can we initially verify that the entire porphyry layer underground has been mineralized, instead of being limited to a narrow contact area of ​​the porphyry layer.

The two estimates of the reserves of the entire copper-gold mine can be said to be vastly different.

However, in the low-lying Drake Plains area, drilling through the porphyry underground would cost two to three million dollars or more for an exploration well.

In other words, the initial exploration cost alone will be as high as 20 to 30 million US dollars.

After an hour of "difficult" communication with Amududi, who spoke very rudely, Cao Mo left Kabuga, Xiao Jun, and the technical director of the exploration company You Tutan alone for a small meeting, and said:

"The focus of our next step is to drill two new 800-meter-deep exploration wells based on the relic materials of Stru Gold Mining Company, in addition to using the original exploration wells for resampling, and also to contact the porphyry layer.

Regional location selection…”

"It is basically clear that there are minerals in the contact area of ​​the porphyry layer - the most important thing now is to verify whether the entire porphyry layer has been mineralized,"

Yu Tutan is also of British mixed-race descent. He applied for a high-paying job as the technical director of Yibogu Mineral Exploration Company. He is very capable, but he is somewhat indifferent to Cao Mo, the real boss of the entire company. Cao Mo's decision almost started from

Basically denying Almoududi's research results, he said anxiously,

"Why waste time in the contact zone? With these four to five million US dollars invested, even if we drill two exploration wells on the west bank of the Wusang River first! As long as we get preliminary verification, Mr. Cao, you will have a headache next

What’s more, how much money does this damn place need to be invested in order to continuously dig out the wealth from the ground! Or, Mr. Cao, you don’t believe in Almoududi’s theoretical research at all and think it’s bullshit? Oh my God, you can’t

Judging a book by its appearance, the geological research in West Africa may not be as good as that in China, but it does not absolutely have no merits!"

"It's not that I don't believe in Almoududi's theoretical research, and it's not that I'm reluctant to spend 20 to 30 million US dollars first,"

Cao Mo only cared about whether others were useful to him. He didn't mind Yu Tutan's questioning attitude and impatient personality. He was the one who made the final decision anyway, and said,

"Akwa National Petroleum and Mining Group has serious faults in technology and management and will not pay attention to Almoududi's research. However, as Akwa's economic door will be fully opened to foreign capital, there are already a large number of
To be continued...