Ancient ‘Land of Fire’ gave birth to global oil industry
Azeris first to devise kerosene plants, offshore oil wells, and percussion drilling

Baku’s first gusher.

The very first people to arrive on the Absheron Peninsula thousands of years ago undoubtedly stood in awe of the fire that arose from the ground and never flickered out. They named the wondrous area the "Land of Fire, " using words that would one day became the modern name for the nation of Azerbaijan.

Long before the Muslim religion arrived, fire-worshipers from India, the Zoroastrians, came to worship at the spot where the fire came from the ground. The Zoroastrians built a temple that stands to this day on the outskirts of Azerbaijan’s capital city, Baku.

Historians have found irrefutable evidence that Baku’s oil has been exported from the Absheron Peninsula to Iran, Iraq and other places farther afield for at least 2,500 years. Camel caravans loaded with skins filled with oil transported it.

In the 14th century Marco Polo saw numerous oil wells when he passed through the region. And he noted in his famous journals that that Azeris used oil for lighting, in wars and for medical treatments.

Early wells were dug by hand, a practice that was not improved upon until the invention of mechanical drilling in the late 1800s. By 1594, an inhabitant of Absheron had dug an oil well to a depth of 100 feet.

In 1884, the world’s first deep well was drilled in Azerbaijan in the Bibi-Heybat field – a full 15 years earlier than the one drilled in Pennsylvania in 1859. By 1913, there were 3,500 wells in Baku.

The first gusher occurred on the Bibi-Heybat field on June 13, 1873. During the first three months, the field yielded over 909 million "poods," – about 1.5 million tons. A second and higher volume gusher came in on October 14, 1875, flowing from a depth of only 300 feet.

This well flowed at a rate of around 3,000 tons per day, resulting in the formation of four large oil lakes. In 1973, the exploration and development began in Azerbaijan of what would later prove to be one of the largest fields in the world in the Roman, Sabunchi, Balakhani and Bibi-Heybat settlements, with total recoverable reserves of over 500 million tons of oil.

Exhausted oil worker at end of 14 hour shift.

In 1859, the first paraffin (kerosene) factory was built in Surakhani next to the Zoroastrian Temple of Fire Worshippers.

In 1901, 11 million tons of oil were produced in Azerbaijan, an amazing worldwide production record at the time. Only one other area in the world approached Baku’s production - Oklahoma. Total American production at the time was just over 9 million tons.

The Nobel brothers, one of which later became famous for the invention of dynamite and a world famous prize which bears the family name, became large oil producers and made much of their money in Baku. They, along with resident Russians, financed much of Baku’s development of the arts.

To compete with the Nobel brothers, other oil producers turned to another famous family with a Baku connection, the Rothschilds. The Rothschilds enhanced their fortunes by financing the construction of a railroad from Baku to the Georgian port of Batumi.

Marcus Samuel, visiting Baku in 1890 with the Rothschild representative, was among the first to spot the potential of the new railway for exporting oil to the Far East via the Suez Canal, thereby countering American (i.e., Standard Oil) competition in the region. Samuel invented a new type of tanker to ship oil by sea. By 1913 Samuel's Shell group owned eleven percent of Baku's fields and more than half of Baku's oil was sold and transported to the Far East. The Shell group later merged with the Royal Dutch Company.

A sharp reduction occurred in 1918 when production dropped to 3,425,000 tons because of the Russian revolution and its repercussions in Azerbaijan. But by 1923, stability was re-established. In 1941, oil production reached a record level of 23.5 million tons. The Baku fields were the Soviet Union’s principal source of oil during World War II, producing 63 percent of all the oil in the USSR.

The very first attempts in producing offshore oil were made in 1798 by Baku entrepreneur Kasim-Bey. He dug two wells about 120 feet from shore in Bibi-Heybat Bay. His idea to hold the sea back by a framework of tightly fitting wooden planks was the forerunner of all modern offshore facilities and fixed platforms.

In 1925, the first main pipeline from Baku to Batumi in Georgia was completed. There were 13 diesel pumping stations that could pump 100 cubic meters an hour.

The advent of rotary drilling speeded the process of well drilling. By 1927, 63 percent of wells were drilled by this means. Percussion drilling, which had been invented in Baku in 1884 and came to be known as the "Baku method," stopped altogether by 1934.

The drilling of super-deep wells began in the Baku oil fields in 1940. In the Gosvay region, the deepest wells of the entire Soviet Union were drilled to depths of 10,300 feet.

– Excerpted from "The Oil and Gas Industry of Azerbaijan," a publication of the State Oil Company of Azerbaijan (SOCAR), and other sources