Oil. History
At the beginning of the 20th century, Russia was the world leading oil producer.
In 1918 V.I. Lenin signed decrees on nationalization of the country’s oil industry and on the establishment of the Main Oil Committee at the fuel department.
The oil industry rehabilitation was made together with its fundamental reconstruction.
In 1940, 31.1 million tons of oil was produced in the country, i.e. the maximum pre-revolutionary level was exceeded almost 3 times. The share of Azerbaijan SSR was about 70%. The Ciscaucasia (Grozny, Maykop) accounted for about 14%, and the Eastern regions (Bashkiria, Perm Region, Sakhalin, Emba) – 14.5%.
During the Great Patriotic War of 1941-45, the oil fields in the Krasnodar Territory and North Ossetia were completely disabled, and the fields of Grozny Region were significantly damaged. At the same time, dozens of new oil fields were discovered, including rich oil deposits in the Tuymazinsky district of Bashkir SSR, Kuibyshev region and new productive formations and horizons in Central Asia, Azerbaijan, Sakhalin and etc.
There was an intensive growth of oil production in the 50-60s. The creation of an oil production complex between the Volga and the Urals ensured not only the rapid achievement of the pre-war oil production level, but its steady growth, mostly due to Tuimazinskoye, Bavlinskoye, Romashkinskoye, Mukhanovskoye, Zolninskoye and other fields discovery.
Since 1958, the oil production growth in the USSR was more than 100 million tons every five years. In 1961–72 alone, more than 3 billion tons of oil (with gas condensate) were produced. The commissioning of new fields in both developed and new oil regions (Western Siberia, offshore regions of Azerbaijan, Western Kazakhstan, Belarus, Udmurtia and Orenburg region) boosted such rapid oil production growth.
A turning point in the development of the soviet oil industry was the discovery of fields in Western Siberia, where the first of shows were found in 1956 within the Kolpashevskaya area.
In 1961-65, 39 oil and gas fields were discovered. The first gas fountain in Western Siberia was from the test well at Berezovsky field in 1953, and the first oil fountain was from Shaim field in 1960.
In 1964, commercial operation of oil fields began, and in less than ten years, oil production with gas condensate reached 200 million tons.
The discovery of Samoltor oil deposit (maximum annual oil production over 150 million ton) and Urengoy gas field (maximum annual gas production about 300 billion m3) in 1967 played a key role in oil and gas production growth.
In the early 80’s the development of Samotlor, Fedorovsky, Pravdinsky, Ust-Balyksky and other fields in Western Siberia provided more than half of the produced oil in the country.
In the USSA it was typical for the oil industry to distribute oil production among the economic regions of the country. If in pre-revolutionary Russia 97% of all oil production was in the North Caucasus and Azerbaijan, in the mid-80s oil was produced in 10 union republics, and in the RSFSR – in 6 autonomous republics, 12 territories and regions, i.e. in most economic regions of the country.
In the 80s soviet oil industry was large, advanced, highly mechanized. The development of oil fields was facilitated by the development of pipeline transport. Oil was transported through a network of oil mains, which connected all major oil regions with the country’s oil refineries and socialist countries.
The first oil pipeline in Russia was built in 1878 at Baku oil fields (9 km long, diameter 76 mm). Until 1917, there were about 1,000 km of oil pipelines in Russia. For the first ten years of Soviet power, 600 km of oil pipelines were built. The rapid growth of oil production in Baku, Grozny, Maykop, and the Northern Caspian in 1930–40 significantly increased the construction volume of main oil pipelines.
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