This certainly puts the entire 1942 Stalingrad-Caucasus campaigns under an interesting light. Hitler said his generals had no idea of the meaning of economic factors in war, but he wasn't much better in his grasp of practical matters.
Throughout this period Hitler and his military advisers apparently never discussed in detail the important question of how Caucasus oil would be transported to the Reich. A quarter of a century earlier, this problem had also vexed General Ludendorff and the German High Command, who never arrived at an adequate solution.
My very first post in this forum was centred on this matter, and it seems I'm still right after these years
Hitler had almost certainly not read the March 1941 report by Lieutenant General Hermann von Hanneken of the War Economy and Armaments Office, which was appended to a letter sent by Generalfeldmarschall (Field Marshal) Keitel to the High Command of the Army (OKH). This report warned that, even if the Caucasus oilfields could be captured intact, very little oil (only 10,000 tons per month) could be carried overland to Germany. Moreover, even if the Black Sea could be made safe for shipping, there would be no ships available for the transport of Caucasus oil up the Danube because the Danube river tankers were already working to capacity transporting Rumanian oil.
This is the result of planning made on whims, with no basis on solid facts. Sure there was plenty of oil in the Caucasus, bringing it over was an entirely different matter. Same thing with the Donbass mine fields, enourmous amounts of manganese etc ores underground, but in the end only ridiculous amounts were able to be extracted.