Oil Rocks is a city in the sea now. Oil Rocks is a village in the Caspian Sea. Why is the President of Ecuador accused of treason
The bowels of our planet are fraught with countless treasures - minerals. Their indescribable variety and beauty have always conquered human hearts. We offer you to admire a selection of these beautiful examples of frozen natural harmony.
1. Opal-Veined Petrified Wood
Under certain conditions, fragments of a felled tree do not decay, but mineralize, turning into real stones of a bizarre shape. This requires hundreds of years and lack of air access to the material, resulting in a unique mineral that resembles shards of frozen wood, dotted with sparkling splashes of opal or chalcedony.
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2. Uvarovite
Discovered in the 19th century in Siberia, a stone related to garnets was nicknamed by the people "the Ural emerald". The mesmerizing green color gives the mineral chromium. In nature, it is extremely rare, and the few finds are very modest in size. By the way, this very mineral was meant by Alexander Kuprin in his work "Garnet Bracelet".
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3. Fluorite
This mineral, which has long been used for decorative purposes and has delighted the eyes of high society with graceful translucent vases and figurines that glow in the dark, has now found a more applied use in optics, becoming an excellent material for creating lenses.
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4. Kemmererite
A very fragile fuchsia-colored stone - kemmererite - is considered a collector's item. To make jewelry out of it, the master needs to apply all his scrupulousness and accuracy. For this reason, the cost of the processed mineral is extremely high.
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5. Hematite, rutile and feldspar
The ability of the black mineral hematite, when processed, to color water in a blood-red color has become the cause of many ineradicable superstitions regarding this stone. But it is popular not only for this reason - hematite is very widespread in nature and is used in addition to decorative in many applied fields.
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6. Thorburnite
As bewitchingly beautiful this mineral is, it is just as deadly. Torbernite crystal prisms contain uranium and can cause cancer in humans. In addition, when heated, these stones begin to slowly emit radon, the most dangerous gas for health.
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7. Clinoclaz
A rare clinoclase crystal has one little secret - when heated, this exquisitely beautiful mineral gives off a garlic scent.
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8. White barite covered with vanadinite crystals
Vanadinite got its name in honor of the Scandinavian goddess of beauty Vanadis. This mineral is one of the heaviest on the planet as it has a high lead content. Store vanadinite crystals away from sunlight, as they tend to darken under their influence.
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9. Fossil egg? No - a geode with an opal core
In places rich in minerals, you can find geodes - geological formations, which are cavities that are hidden inside a variety of minerals. On cuts and chips, geodes can look extremely outlandish and attractive.
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10. Silver stibnite with barite
Stibnite is an antimony sulfide, but it appears to be composed of high purity silver. Thanks to this similarity, one day someone decided to make elite cutlery out of this material. And it was a very bad idea ... Antimony crystals cause severe poisoning, even after contact with the skin, you must thoroughly wash it with soap.
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11. Chalcanthite
The enchanting beauty of these crystals hides a mortal danger: once in a liquid medium, the copper contained in this mineral begins to rapidly dissolve, threatening all living things that are in its path. Just one small blue pebble can destroy an entire pond with all its flora and fauna, so you should treat it with extreme caution.
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12. Cacoxenite
Acting as an inclusion, this rare mineral is able to give quartz and amethyst a unique color and higher value. As a representative of needle crystals, cacoxenite is incredibly fragile.
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13. Labradorite
The mineral, mined in the northern regions, with its appearance seems to reflect the sky under which it was found: the color play against the background of the stone's dark dotted with sparkling stars resembles the aurora borealis blazing on a long polar night.
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14. Black opal
The most valuable type of opal. Despite the word “black” in the name, this mineral gets the highest value if it has multi-colored sparkle on a dark background. The more varied the shades of its radiance, the higher the price.
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15. Kuprosklodowskite
Needle crystals of kuprosklodowskite attract admiring attention with the depth and variety of their green color, as well as their amusing shape. However, this mineral is mined in uranium deposits and is highly radioactive and should be kept away not only from living things, but even from other minerals.
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16. Halite and sylvite blue
Milky-white or off-white sylvite is often found in volcanoes, and blue halite (sodium chloride) is found in sedimentary rocks.
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17. Bismuth
Cultured bismuth crystals have a recognizable iridescent sheen on their dark surface. This effect arises from the oxide film covering it. By the way, bismuth oxide chloride is used in the creation of nail varnishes as a means to give them shine. In the meantime, there is no need to know about it. ”
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18. Opal
Opal, a noble gemstone, is picky about the surrounding humidity: if it is kept in excessively dry conditions for a long time, it can fade and even crack. For this reason, opals should occasionally be “bathed” in clean water, and worn more often if they are presented in the form of jewelry, so that the stones are saturated with moisture emanating from the human body. In the meantime, there is no need to know about it. ”
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19. Tourmaline
Juicy reds and pinks, smooth transitions of shades with the most unexpected ranges make tourmaline one of the most popular collectible minerals. According to historians, it was these stones that were crowned with many jewelry and accessories of members of royal families and eminent persons: from Catherine II to Tamerlane. In the meantime, there is no need to worry about it. ”
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20. Bildonite
The rare crystal of bildonite owes its color to the copper contained in its composition, and its luster is due to a high percentage of lead.
mindat.org
21. Osmium
Having the status of the most dense natural substance, osmium is extremely difficult to process. The widespread use of this metal in medicine, manufacturing and the defense industry makes the demand for it incredibly high. And given the rarity of osmium in nature, the cost of one gram of its isotope is currently equal to twenty thousand dollars.
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22. Malachite
The whimsical arrangement of copper layers in the voids of karst caves, where malachite originates, determines the future structure of its patterns. They can be represented by concentric circles, star-shaped placers, or chaotic ribbon patterns. The age of malachite beads found in the ancient city of Jericho is estimated by archaeologists at 9 thousand years.
mindat.org
23. Emmonsith
A rather rare mineral, Emmonsite, presented in the form of small acicular crystals with a glassy luster, is found in mines in North and South America.
mindat.org
24. Aquamarine on potassium mica
For the likeness of the edges to the purest sea waves, the Roman thinker Pliny the Elder gave this noble stone the name "aquamarine". Blueer aquamarines are more valuable than greenish ones. This mineral is very popular among designers and jewelry lovers, and its high strength helps to create jewelry of any configuration.
mindat.org
25. Pallasite meteorite
In 1777, the German scientist Pallas brought samples of a rare metal discovered in Krasnoyarsk at the site of a meteorite to the Kunstkamera Museum. Soon, the entire block of extraterrestrial origin weighing 687 kg was transported to St. Petersburg. This material is called pallasic iron or pallasite. A similar substance from those that are mined on our planet has not been found. According to experts, this meteorite is an iron-nickel base with numerous inclusions of olivine crystals. In the meantime, there is no need to know about it. ”
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26. Ailing
Small cubic crystals of blue color - boleites - are especially prized in the countries of South and North America. So far, this rare mineral has not been seen in use in Russia.
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27. Crocoite
The name "crocoite" comes from the ancient Greek word meaning "saffron", since the similarity of the crystal surface with this spice is noticeable to the naked eye. Red lead ore, which this mineral is, is of particular value to collectors and connoisseurs.
awminerals.com
In the late 1940s, an amazing project was launched 100 kilometers east of the coast of Azerbaijan. For several decades, a real town with high-rise buildings, a clinic, a canteen, a bakery and even a lemonade shop, surrounded by hundreds of kilometers of overpasses with car traffic, has grown right in the sea. This is Oil Rocks, a unique oilmen settlement, which has no analogues on the planet. Onliner.by tells how man once again defeated nature by building a city on the open sea.
The extraction of a black, badly smelling, but at the same time flammable liquid by primitive, artisanal methods began in Azerbaijan in the Middle Ages. The Absheron Peninsula, the largest city of which was and remains the Azerbaijani capital, Baku, became the center of the craft. Humanity understood the value of the resource, nicknamed "black gold" much later - a real oil boom in the vicinity of Baku flared up in the second half of the 19th century, decorating the suburbs of the city with hundreds of towers.
At the beginning of the next XX century, Baku already became the oil capital of the entire Russian Empire, almost 90% of the country's oil and about half of the entire world were extracted here. “Black gold” brought millions of rubles to Baku industrialists, including the Nobel and Rothschild families.
The Soviet government, of course, took oil away from private business. At the same time, the easy-to-develop deposits in Apsheron began to gradually deplete, and the state was faced with the task of finding new sources of raw materials, which acquired a strategic character. Soon after the end of the Great Patriotic War, a fundamental decision was made - to go to sea for oil.
On the Caspian Sea, about a hundred kilometers from the coast of the Absheron Peninsula, there was a place called Black stones by fishermen. It was a ridge of rocks barely protruding above the sea surface, which had a characteristic black-gray color. This and the water with oily streaks hinted at the release of oil somewhere nearby. In November 1948, a geological exploration landing was landed on Chernye Kamenny, headed by Nikolai Baybakov, the minister of the oil industry and the future long-term chairman of the USSR State Planning Committee. The conclusion of the representative commission was unequivocal and optimistic - there is oil on the Black Stones, and there is a lot of it.
This is how the future city looked at the dawn of its existence.
The sea depth in this area was only 5-20 meters, so the management of the Azneft association decided to build an oil production base right in the open sea. The available rocky islets were still not enough for this, so the old ship "Chvanov", which was being prepared for decommissioning, served as a bridgehead. The semi-submerged ship simultaneously became the first place of residence of the drillers, who were accommodated in its cabins. A year after the start of the development of the field, the first well of a kilometer depth began to work, after which the Black stones were immediately renamed Oil.
Over the next six months, six more old, outdated ships were towed to the pioneer "Chvanov" and sunk. This is how the “island of seven ships” was formed, the heart of the future village. The ships were connected to each other and to the nearby islands by metal racks installed on wooden piles. The structure was quickly overgrown with the first temporary houses.
Soon the drillers were able to move to relatively comfortable housing - 16 two-story wooden houses were built for them on the Oil Rocks. In addition, 2 power plants, a canteen, a bathhouse, a first-aid post, a library were built here - a good infrastructure for a village surrounded by the sea.
The area of land reclaimed from the water also grew. More than half a million cubic meters of sand and rock were brought here on special ships. The shallow depth of the sea made it possible to combine natural and artificial islands into a single whole.
In parallel with the increase in the number of wells, the ramps connecting them were actively built. It was an amazing sight - dozens, hundreds of capital buildings, oil rigs, oil wells, connected by many kilometers of bridges, along which cars and trucks were briskly driving. Around the same only the Caspian Sea, to the nearest land a hundred kilometers by boat or helicopter.
The center of the working village with two-storey houses built for drillers and service personnel.
This color image from the 1960s clearly shows the black rocky islands still partially protruding above the water's surface. In the distance in the center is the “island of seven ships”.
Since the late 1940s, about 2,000 wells have been drilled on the Oil Rocks, which provided 60% of all Soviet offshore oil. Initially, it was delivered to land by tankers, but in 1981 a 78-kilometer underwater pipeline was commissioned, which made it possible to abandon the use of ships, whose operation in shallow waters and numerous rocks in this area of the sea posed a certain risk.
The storms, which are not rare in the Caspian, were even more dangerous. In the first years of the development of the "oil-stream" field, all hydraulic structures were built using wooden piles, which raised them to a height of 6.5 meters. As nature quickly proved, this was not enough. On September 15, 1956, a catastrophic storm broke out, resulting in human casualties.
“In the morning the north wind blew, its speed rapidly increased and after 2 hours it reached 35 m / s with gusts of up to 40 m / s. On land, a wind of a similar force tears off the roofs of houses, uproots trees, destroys power lines, and disperses a powerful wave at sea. The force of the storm reached 12 on the Beaufort scale. The wind blew continuously for more than two days. Giant waves that hit the oil field destroyed about 4 kilometers of sea ramps, eight ramp sites, of which six were already producing oil in a constant mode. The marine base was also damaged. But the most tragic result of the unprecedented storm is the death of 22 oil workers ",- wrote the journal "Science and Life".
Designers and builders have learned a sad lesson. The height of the flooring on the structures under construction was raised to 11.6 meters above the level of calm water, and wooden piles began to be massively replaced with metal ones.
There was no permanent population in Oil Rocks. The drillers worked on a rotational basis, and initially they were brought to work by motor ships. At first, the ships sailed from the sea terminal on the Artem Island, connected by a dam with the Absheron Peninsula (they even let an electric train there from Baku!), Later a passenger service was established from the sea station of the Azerbaijani capital. Nevertheless, the passage by sea was inconvenient, in bad weather it took many hours, and during storms it stopped altogether. The situation was corrected in 1960, when Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev visited the Oil Rocks. The emotional Soviet leader was so impressed by the village that he ordered a special helicopter detachment to be organized to transport work shifts to and from the shift.
Helicopters were sometimes used to deliver oil workers to wells. The number of stationary platforms has increased so much (now about 200), and the mileage of overpasses has grown so much that the use of road transport in some cases was simply ineffective. Currently, the total length of the "streets" of this unusual village has reached 350 kilometers.
Roads here, of course, are single-lane, oncoming vehicles drive around either on platforms, or thanks to regularly organized special "pockets".
In Soviet times, about 5 thousand people worked at the Oil Rocks at the same time. Despite the format of the shift hostel adopted here, the inhabitants of which were constantly changing, the life of the people here was well equipped. In addition to a bathhouse, a canteen and a first-aid post, over time, there appeared its own bakery, a cinema, even a lemonade workshop, the products of which were exported to the "mainland". The drillers were regularly entertained by the artists who flew in from Baku. All this made it possible to live and work with a certain comfort, although, of course, not without some restrictions. For example, alcohol and, of course, cigarettes are strictly prohibited on Oil Rocks.
The photograph from 1957 even shows an impromptu "embankment" with plants growing in tubs, benches and workers strolling in their free time.
Nevertheless, during the same visit of Khrushchev in 1960, workers complained to the country's leader about the living conditions at Oil Rocks. Wooden two-story houses here, in fact, were ordinary cheap barracks, which were massively built in the USSR after the war. Nikita Sergeevich immediately ordered to provide the drillers with modern housing. It was decided to replace the two-story buildings with 5- and 9-story dormitories. The preparation of the site for their construction took nearly a decade. In the central part of the village, "the island of seven ships", a huge concrete platform was built, which became the foundation for new, already multi-storey buildings. Such a structure was no longer afraid of any storms.
In total, in the 1970s, three five-story and two nine-story dormitories were built here. New Oil stones from a bird's eye view.
High-rise buildings seem to sprout straight out of the sea.
Having survived the difficult 1990s, in the 2000s the Oil Rocks entered a new period of prosperity. Azerbaijan, which became rich in oil exports, reconstructed the central part of the village. All hostels have undergone modernization, several new modern buildings have appeared. This is how the village looks at the present time.
The dormitory complex now rather resembles a sanatorium at some all-Union health resort.
Boarding schools for oil workers and support personnel are divided into male and female. Female, however, for objective reasons, exists in a single copy and is combined with the village canteen. In the foreground is the very first borehole of 1949, mothballed as a monument.
In the dining room of the village.
A relict work of monumental and decorative art has also been preserved - a colorful mosaic depicting the joyful life in Soviet Azerbaijan.
Men occupy the second nine-story building and several long, often curved, five-story buildings.
But once upon a time, more than 60 years ago, everything began with such temporary huts.
Now a fragment of this very first house on the high seas is also a monument.
There is also a small park in the residential area. This is how he looked in the 1980s.
In the second half of the 2000s, the park, along with the rest of the center of Oil Rocks, was reconstructed.
In addition to the general improvement, it was decorated with a number of memorials, for example, in honor of local oil drillers.
Or victims of the catastrophic storm of 1956.
Oil Rocks(azerb. Neft daslar) - the extreme eastern, land point of the Republic of Azerbaijan, an urban-type settlement in the Caspian Sea, 42 kilometers east of the Absheron Peninsula. Located on steel racks, built in 1949 in connection with the start of oil production from the seabed around the so-called. Black Stones - a stone ridge (banks), slightly protruding on the surface of the sea. The Oil Rocks are surrounded by stone reefs, between which there are banks, underwater and surface rocks. The North and South harbors are located off the western coast of the island and are formed by sunken ships. There are drilling rigs connected by overpasses, on which the village of workers of oil fields is located. This is the easternmost settlement of Azerbaijan. There is no permanent population.
Oil Rocks is considered in the Guinness Book of Records as the oldest offshore oil platform.
From the history
Monument to oilmen at Oil Rocks
Oil Rocks is a unique offshore field, which was an outstanding event in the development of the oil business of Azerbaijan. Oil Rocks at that time was the largest offshore oil field in the world, both in terms of the capacity of the reservoir and the size of the oil produced. Oil Rocks are still a unique city on stilts. In a short time in the open sea, at a distance of up to 100 km from the coast, huge sea crafts were manufactured, equipped with first-class domestic equipment at that time. Oil Rocks is considered the capital of the Caspian shelf.
Large-scale geological studies of the NK region were carried out in 1945-1948. The construction of the village began in 1958. 2 power plants with a capacity of 250 kW, a boiler house, an oil gathering station, treatment plants, 16 two-storey houses, a hospital, a bathhouse, etc. were built. By 1960, the building of the Baku Oil Technical School was built. In 1966-1975. there was already a bakery, a lemonade shop, 2 5-storey dormitories and one 9-storey residential building. A park with trees was laid out. In 1976-1986. The construction of oil gathering stations, 3 5-storey dormitories, a canteen, a hospital, 2 gas-oil compressor stations, a bio-installation of drinking water, 2 subsea oil pipelines with a diameter of approximately 350 miles was completed. to the Dubenda terminal. Automatic movement is carried out along the overpasses. A systematic steamship and helicopter service is maintained between Oil Rocks and the port of Baku.
Etymology
The name "Oil Rocks" has historical significance - long before the discovery of this field, scientists saw black mountains covered with a film of oil in the Caspian Sea. This area of the sea area was named "Black Stones". The area of Oil Kameshki began to be taught already in 1859, which was reflected in a number of works by various scientists: the popular explorer of the Caucasus, academician G.V. Abikh and famous geological scientists S.A.Kovalevsky, F.A.Rustambekov, A.K. Alieva, E. N. Alikhanova, B. K. Babazade, V. S. Melik-Pashaeva, F. I. Samedov, Yu. A. Safarova, S. A. Orudzheva, A.B.Suleymanova, Kh. B. Yusifzade, Mtr. F. Mir-Babayev and practically all others.
Oil production
Oil Rig Rigs
One of the first initiators of oil production from the bottom of the sea was the mining engineer V.K.Zglenitsky, who, on October 3, 1896, applied to the Baku Mining Department with a request to allow him to drill wells on the artificial continent in the Bibi-Heybat Bay. To his own petition, he attached a project unique for that time, in accordance with which it was supposed to build the construction of a special waterproof platform at an altitude of 12 feet (up to 4 mtr) above sea level with the descent of the produced oil into barges.
Postage stamp of the USSR in 1971, dedicated to Oil Rocks
In the case of the fountain, a special barge with a carrying capacity of up to 200 thousand tons of oil was envisaged, which would ensure the safe export of oil to the shore. The Caucasian Mining Administration rejected his request, nevertheless, admitting that the bottom of the Caspian Sea near Absheron is oil-bearing, and it would be desirable to check both the oil-bearing capacity of the seabed and to experimentally identify the techno possibility of oil production and the economic conditions of this method of operation.
The first practical work on the study of the geological structures of the NK water area was carried out in 1946 by the oil expedition of the Academy of Sciences of Azerbaijan, as a result of which very huge oil reserves were discovered.
A powerful impetus for the exploration of oil and gas fields in various parts of the Caspian Sea was the production of offshore oil near the Ilyich Bay (now Bail estuaries) from the world's 1st well No. 71, built in 1924 on piles made of wood. Later, in the USSR in 1932-1933, 2 more foundations were built, when it already became clear that the oil-bearing contour extends beyond the Bibi-Heybat Bay filled up in 1932. The first foundation, erected at a distance of 270 meters from the eastern enclosure of the backfill of the bay at a sea depth of up to 6 meters, had an area of 948 meters and a length of 55 meters.
The 1st landing of oil workers, who landed on the Oil Rocks on November 14, 1948, was part of the commanding landing party Nikolai Baybakov, the creator of the idea of offshore oil deposits, the head of the Aznefterazvedka association Sabit Orudzhev, geologist Agakurban Aliyev and a drilling specialist. Yusif Safarov. Ajdar Sadikhov, one of the most experienced post-war Caspian captains, was the captain of the sea tug "Pobeda", on which the landing party sailed. In addition to this, there were professionals, master builders, rig riggers, drilling engineers, who carried out the construction of the first production facilities on piles.
Industrial development of Oil Pebbles
Preparatory work for drilling the first exploration well at Oil Rocks began in June 1949. To create a drilling bridgehead, the Chvanov ship, which had served its personal time, was towed to the Oil Pebbles zone and was sunk at this point. On August 24, 1949, the team of the future Hero of Socialist Labor Misha Kaverochkin began drilling the first well, which gave the long-awaited oil on November 7 of the same year. It was a world triumph: the well had a depth of about 1000 mt, and its daily production rate was 100 tons of gushing oil. In honor of this impact, it was decided to rename "Black Rocks" to "Oil Rocks".
Later, in order to build a bridgehead for drilling the 2nd well, 7 more old ships, literally unusable for navigation, were brought there and half-flooded. This is how the artificial "Island of 7 ships" was born, where, six months later, oil was already being produced.
The 2nd well, drilled by the team of another Hero of Socialist Labor, Kurban Abbasov, with approximately the same flow rate as the 1st, was commissioned in the first half of 1950.
In 1951, the industrial development of Oil Pebbles began. In 1952, for the first time in world practice, the construction of a flyover began, which was supposed to connect artificial steel islands. Oil production is carried out from more than 20 horizons, which is a unique phenomenon. Since 1949, 1940 wells have been drilled at the field, producing 60% of all USSR offshore oil. At the end of the 90s. the stock of wells amounted to 472, of which 421 were in operation. The average daily production level is 1800-2000 tons of oil, 50% of the wells are flooded. Remaining recoverable oil reserves in the field amount to 21 million tons. The field is connected to the mainland by a 78 km long subsea oil pipeline with a diameter of approximately 350 miles. 2000 people worked here.
Oil transportation
Oil Rocks Docks
In February 1951, the 1st tanker with oil from the Oil Kameshkov field stood up for unloading at the pier of the oil-loading port of Dubendi. The underwater oil pipeline from Oil Kameshki, through which oil is currently delivered to the shore, was built only in 1981.
New story
Currently, Oil Rocks are more than 200 stationary platforms, and the length of the streets and lanes of this city in the sea reaches up to 350 km. Over the past years, this field has produced more than 160 million tons of oil and 13 billion mtr of associated petroleum gas. There are more than 380 production wells operating here, each of which produces on average up to 5 tons of oil per day.
For the first time, an absolute cycle of offshore operations was founded directly at Oil Rocks: from prospecting for oil and gas to the delivery of finished products, from experiments in the field of marine technology to its mass development and implementation. In the process of conducting exploration and operational work at Oil Rocks, a whole school of training scientific personnel was formed. In practice, the latest ideas and developments of scientists were implemented, and oilmen acquired professional experience and skills in the most complex marine aspects. Oil specialists working at NK were later sent to work at the fields "Kazakhneft", "Turkmenneft", "Dagneft", "Tatneft", "Bashneft", etc.
At Oil Rocks, for the first time in the USSR, the method of drilling from the 1st base of several directional wells was tested. In the future, this method of cluster drilling was widely used in other oil fields in the USSR. And the new trestle method of development of the Oil Rocks field is still considered the first in the world and has no analogues.
Khrushchev and Oil Rocks
5-9 storey buildings for oil workers-shift workers on Oil Rocks
In 1960, the 1st Secretary of the Central Committee of the CPSU N. S. Khrushchev visited the Oil Rocks and promptly resolved two serious problems of the field:
- 1) gave the order to deliver watches from the shore to the field by helicopters; at that time it was MI-4, and later MI-8 (before that, the inhabitants of our planet, food, all kinds of products were delivered from the shore only by sea; and
- 2) ordered to build 5-9-storey buildings on bulk foundations (before his visit, 1-2-storey houses were built there on stilts). Thus, an important problem of housing for oil workers on shift workers was resolved: during the first time of their work at Oil Rocks, oil workers lived in the cabins of old ships sunk near the islets.
New story
In November 2007, a new platform No. 2387 was put into operation at Oil Rocks, designed for drilling 12 wells. The height of the two-block platform reaches 45 mt, weight - 542 tons. The platform is installed at a sea depth of 24.5 meters. The service life of the blocks assembled at the Baku Deep-Water Base Plant is stipulated for 50 years. It is planned to drill 12 state-of-the-art wells from this platform at an average depth of 1800 mtr.
During the period of the Soviet Union, many unique projects were implemented in the country. One of these is the settlement of Oil Rocks, or "Kamushki". This is a real city by the sea. Now it is called the "capital" of the Caspian shelf, the second Venice. The reason for the construction is oil production.
Description
Oil Rocks is a village 42 kilometers from the Absheron Peninsula. It was built on metal racks that connect the drilling rigs. In the north and south of the harbor, piers were built by the sinking of ships. At that time, 7 ships were sunk, one of which was the very first oil tanker in the world. It was built by the Nobel brothers (Sweden) in 1878. For some time, they even tried to lift the tanker, but nothing succeeded.
From the moment of construction, the city has remained the only one of its kind, there are no similar settlements in the world. The settlement is listed in the Guinness Book of Records as the oldest offshore oil platform.
How oil was discovered
Back in 1859, in the area of the modern urban settlement, Oil Rocks began to study the landscape. It was possible to find out that in this place there are stone ridges, or banks. These are rocks, slightly protruding from the sea, with an oil slick. At the time of the discovery of oil, in the early 40s of the last century, it was the largest and richest field.
Before the revolution
VK Zglenitsky was the initiator of oil production in these places. He filed a petition with the authorities in 1896, to which he attached a drilling project. The project was unique at that time and involved drilling wells on an artificial continent in the Bibi-Heybatskaya Bay. The document envisaged the construction of a platform that would not let water through and was supposed to rise 4 meters above sea level with the simultaneous lowering of the obtained oil directly into the barges.
The project also provided that if there is a fountain, the oil will fall into a barge with a carrying capacity of 200 thousand tons. However, the mining administration completely rejected the application, as it considered that there was no clear confirmation of the oil-bearing capacity of the sea shelf near the Absheron Peninsula.
After World War II
The study of the water area in the place of a modern city in the sea (Oil Rocks) began only in 1946. An entire expedition was organized, which revealed that there are huge reserves of oil. Already in 1948, troops landed on small islands nearby. They were several brave specialists: oilmen and installers. A year later, they managed to install a house and a small drilling rig with an area of 14 square meters and a depth of 1000 meters. From that moment, large-scale geological research began. The construction of the village itself began only 10 years later.
Initially, they built a power plant, a boiler house and an oil collection point, and a treatment plant. The first to appear was a 2-storey residential building for employees, then 15 more were built. Later, a bathhouse, a hospital and other household facilities appeared.
In 1960, a technical school was opened in the village of Oil Rocks, where future oil workers were trained. In the period from 1966 to 1975, a bread factory, a workshop where lemonade was produced, worked. A 5-storey hostel and even a 9-storey building were built. They broke the park, where they planted trees. Automobile communication in the city was carried out through oil racks. And communication with Baku was maintained by air (helicopters) and water - there were regular flights of steamships.
Modern city
Oil Rocks in the Caspian Sea are more than 200 fixed platforms. The total length of all streets and lanes of the settlement is 350 kilometers. The total amount of oil produced over the entire period of its existence reaches 160 million tons. There are 391 wells operating on a permanent basis with a daily production of 5 tons. In parallel with oil, oil gas is produced, of which approximately 13 billion cubic meters have been obtained so far.
However, not everything is so rosy today, Siberian oil turned out to be much easier and cheaper to extract, therefore the city is in desolation, and now there are about 2 thousand people living here, and once there were only 5 thousand people in the village who were employed in oil production.
Oil Rocks is an urban-type settlement in the Azerbaijan part of the Caspian Sea, 42 kilometers east of the Absheron Peninsula. It is located on metal racks, built in 1949 in connection with the start of oil production from the bottom of the sea around the so-called Black Rocks - a stone ridge (bank), barely protruding from the surface of the sea -Long before the discovery of this oil field, scientists noticed black, film-coated rocks in the Caspian Sea.District Oil Rocks began to study since 1859, which was reflected in a number of works by various scientists.The Oil Rocks are surrounded by rock reefs, between which there are banks, underwater and surface rocks. The North and South harbors are located off the western coast of the island and are formed by sunken ships. There are drilling rigs, connected by racks, on which the village of workers of oil fields is located. This is the easternmost settlement of Azerbaijan.
Oil Rocks is a unique offshore field, which was an outstanding event in the development of the oil business of Azerbaijan. Oil Rocks at that time was the world's largest offshore oil field, both in terms of reservoir capacity and the volume of oil produced. To this day, Oil Rocks is the only city on stilts in the world. In a short period of time, in the open sea, at a distance of up to 100 kilometers from the coast, large seafields were created, equipped with first-class domestic equipment at that time. Oil Rocks is considered the capital of the Caspian shelf.
From the history
The first practical work on the study of the geological structures of the water area Oil stones was carried out in 1946 by the oil expedition of the Academy of Sciences of Azerbaijan, as a result of which huge reserves of oil were discovered.
14 November 1948 Years, in stormy weather, the first landing, consisting of a small group of brave geologists, installers and oil workers, landed on a rocky group of islets completely flooded with waves and notorious among local fishermen. A small ship "Pobeda", on board of which were the famous Azerbaijani geologist A. Aliyev, drilling specialist Y. Orudzhev, construction workers, drilling engineers, who carried out the construction of the first production facilities on piles, as well as the head of the 1947 S. Orudzhev, the Aznefterazvedka association, approached the islets cautiously. Ajdar Sadikhov, one of the most experienced post-war Caspian captains, was the captain of the sea tug "Pobeda", on which the landing party sailed. The landing party managed to land on a small island, and soon on piles driven into the bottom of the sea, the first drilling rig on Oil Rocks and a house for the drilling crew with an area of only 14 m2!
Starting from this date, large-scale geological studies of the Oil Rocks region began. The construction of the village itself began in 1958. Then 2 power plants with a capacity of 250 kW, a boiler house, an oil gathering station, treatment plants, 16 two-storey houses, a hospital, a bathhouse and other necessary household and technical facilities were built. By 1960, the building of the Baku Oil Technical School was built there. In 1966-1975. there was already a bakery, a lemonade shop, two 5-storey dormitories and one 9-storey residential building. A park with trees was laid out. In 1976-1986. the construction of oil gathering points, three 5-storey dormitories, a canteen, a hospital, 2 gas-oil compressor stations, a biological installation of drinking water, 2 subsea oil pipelines with a diameter of 350 mm to the Dubenda terminal was completed. Car traffic is carried out on overpasses. Regular steamship and helicopter traffic is maintained between Oil Rocks and the port of Baku.
Prepare work to drill the first exploration well at NOil Stonesstarted in June 1949 of the year. An outdated ship was used to create a drilling base. « Chvanov»,
towed into the zone Oil Rocks and submerged at a given point. To create the foundation of drilling platforms in the areaOil Rockswas flooded 7 ships. 24 August 1949 year, the brigade of the future Hero of Socialist Labor Mikhail Kaverochkin began drilling the first well, which gave 7 November of the same year the long-awaited oil. It was a world triumph: the well had a depth of about 1000 m, and its daily flow rate was 100 tons of fountain oil. In honor of this event, it was decided to rename the "Black Stones" to " Oil Rocks ».
A powerful impetus to the exploration of oil and gas fields in various parts of the Caspian Sea was the production of offshore oil near the Ilyich Bay (now the Bail estuaries) from the world's 1st well No. 71, built in 1924 on wooden piles. Later, in the USSR in 1932-1933, two more foundations were built, when it became clear that the oil-bearing contour extends beyond the Bibi-Heybat Bay, which was filled up in 1932. The first foundation, built at a distance of 270 m from the eastern fence of the backfill of the bay at a sea depth of up to 6 m, had an area of 948 m2 and a length of 55 m.
IN
At present, Oil Rocks are more than 200 stationary platforms, and the length of the streets and lanes of this city in the sea reaches up to 350 kilometers. Over the past years, more than 160 million tons of oil and 13 billion cubic meters of associated petroleum gas have been produced at this field. There are more than 391 production wells here, each of which produces on average up to 5 tons of oil per day.Prepared by Rauf Hasanli
