Germany pushed for the caucasus oil fields seemingly to control them as the German army was running on fumes and could barely keep their tanks running. but how would controlling the fields actually lead to them being able to refuel?
would they not still have to somehow funnel it back to refineries for it to be actually useable? and build ten of thousands of kilometers of pipeline or rail to get it back to german factories or to the more northern areas of the front?
was this to simply deny the soviets the oil? i'm just thinking about the ongoing scorched earth policy and how even if the germans seized the land i'm unclear if any of it would be actually usable by then
The troops would not have been refueling directly from the wells at Maikop, Baku, or Grozny no. The oil cities did have refineries, but as you might expect the retreating Soviets did a bang-up job spiking the wells:
It wasn't just a case of the refineries and tank farms being set on fire, as memorable a sight as that had been to the advancing Germans. 35 The destruction of Maikop was the work of highly trained engineers and technicians. The works above ground had been subjected to a thorough trashing; demolition teams had even poured concrete down the wellheads. It was "a classic example of fundamental demolition," according to one German official. As distressing as it must have been to its new overlords, however, getting Maikop pumping again was an engineering problem, not some sort of mystery, and engineering had always been a German specialty. Specialists from the Reich, a 6,500-man-strong Petroleum Technical Brigade, arrived on the scene almost immediately and could have put Maikop back online, given enough heavy equipment and time. Unfortunately, there would not be nearly enough of either.
(Rob Citino, Death of the Wehrmacht: The German Campaigns of 1942 (Lawrence, KS: Univ Pr of Kansas, 2007) 232.