RIASSUNTO
For more than 2500 years, natural gas issues in the Surakhany district ofthe Apsheron peninsula were the object of pilgrimages by fire worshippers andHindoos from Burma and India. Even as late as 1890, Hindoo priests conductedceremonies in a temple at Surakhany, which probably replaced a more ancientone; but later, the visits of the pilgrims were prohibited in order to checkthe spread of Asiatic diseases in that region.
For centuries, limited supplies of oil have been abstracted from shallowexcavations in the Caspian oil belt and dispatched into the interior of Asiaand elsewhere for medicinal and industrial purposes. Statistics show a yield of37,400 bbl. in 1863, but only since 1869 has there been serious development; inthat year the yield was 203,000 bbl. At that time, hand digging was supplantedby drilling, and the enormous wells that resulted from tapping sources hithertobeyond the reach of operators completely demoralized the industry for a time,owing to inadequate outlets for the products.
The early activities in this area were greatly hindered by annoying taxation,monopolies, imperial land grants, etc., but when these were revoked oradjusted, in 1877, the industry sprang into prominence and, between 1898 and1901, the Baku fields produced practically one-half of the world's supply ofoil.
Within a few miles of Baku lie the two richest oil fields in the world; viz.,the Balakhany-Saboontchy-Romany and the Bibi-Eibat, the latter constitutingalmost a suburb of the city. For many years the gasoline obtained in therefineries of the Baku area was burned in pits, being considered an undesirableproduct, and until 1870 the residue also was destroyed, its value as a fuel notbeing recognized. Kerosene was the main product sought by the refiners. It wasshipped across the Caspian Sea and up the Volga to the industrial centers ofRussia. Only on the completion of the Baku-Batoum railway did the Baku oilfields secure important commercial communication with the outside world throughthe medium of the Black Sea. The first tank steamer was successfully launchedon the Caspian in 1879, by Messrs. Nobels, for transporting oil in bulk insteadof in barrels. In 1905, an 8-in. pipe line to Batoum was completed; this wascapable of transporting to seaboard 8,000,000 bbl. of kerosene per annum.
AIME 065-07