Oil Rocks - the first offshore platform in the world

2024 Author: Harold Hamphrey | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 10:06

During the period of the Soviet Union, many unique projects were implemented in the country. One of these is the settlement of Oil Stones, or "Kamushki". This is a real city on 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 stones - a village 42 kilometers from the Absheron Peninsula. It was built on metal overpasses that connect drilling rigs. In the north and south of the harbor, the pillars were built by flooding ships. At that time, 7 ships were sunk, one of which was the very first oil tanker in the world. And it was built by the Nobel brothers (Sweden) in 1878. For some time, they even tried to lift the tanker, but nothing happened.

The city has remained the only one of its kind since its construction, 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

As far back as 1859, in the area of the modern urban settlement Neftyanye Kamni 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.

What happened before the revolution

The initiator of oil production in these places was the mining engineer VK Zglenitsky. He petitioned 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-Heybat Bay. The document envisaged the construction of a platform that would not let water through and had to rise 4 meters above sea level with the simultaneous lowering of the resulting oil directly into the barges.

The project also provided that if there was a whole fountain, then oil would fall into a barge with a carrying capacity of 200 thousand tons. However, the mining department completely rejected the application, as it considered that there was no clear confirmation of the oil content of the sea shelf near the Absheron Peninsula.

Post World War II

The study of the water area in the place of the modern city in the sea (Oil Rocks) began only in 1946. A whole expedition was organized, which revealed that there are huge oil reserves. Already in 1948, troops landed on small islands near the Absheron Peninsula. It was a few brave specialists: oilmen and assemblers. 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. FROMAt this point, large-scale geological research began. The village itself began to be built only 10 years later.

Initially, a power plant, a boiler house and an oil collection point, and treatment facilities were built. The first to appear was a 2-story residential building for employees, then another 15 were built. Later, a bathhouse, a hospital and other household facilities appeared.

In 1960, a technical school was opened in the village of Neftyanye Kamni, where future oil workers were trained. In the period from 1966 to 1975, a bread factory worked, a workshop where lemonade was produced. They built a 5-storey hostel and even a 9-storey building. They laid out a park where trees were planted. Automobile communication around the city was carried out along oil overpasses. And communication with Baku was maintained by air (helicopters) and water - there were regular flights of steamers.

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. 391 wells operate on a permanent basis with a daily production of 5 tons. In parallel with oil, oil gas is being produced, which has received approximately 13 billion cubic meters to date.

However, not everything is so rosy today, Siberian oil turned out to be much easier and cheaper to produce, so the city is in ruins, and now about 2 thousand people live here, and once only the population employed in oil production in the villagethere were 5 thousand people.