Azerbaijan: land of fire

Aug. 14, 2006
On the Absheron Peninsula of the Caspian Sea thousands of years ago, flames rising from the ground that never flickered out so astonished itinerant Persians that they named the area “Azerbaijan”-the land of fire.

On the Absheron Peninsula of the Caspian Sea thousands of years ago, flames rising from the ground that never flickered out so astonished itinerant Persians that they named the area “Azerbaijan”-the land of fire.

Later, fire-worshipers from India, the Zoroastrians, built their Atashgah temple, which still stands, on the outskirts of the oil-rich country’s capital city Baku. Today tourists seek out Fire Mountain and other area sites where natural gas still seeping through fissures in the earth continue to burn.

Early area wells (oil “springs”) were dug by hand and oil exported for 2,500 years to Iran and Iraq in camel caravans loaded with skins containing the oil. Marco Polo in the 14th Century saw numerous oil wells when he passed through the region. By 1594 a well was dug to 100 ft at Absheron.

In 1844, the world’s first deep oil well was drilled in Bibi-Heybat field with a percussion method, and in 1859 the first paraffin (kerosine) factory was built in Surakhani adjacent to the Zoroastrian Temple.

Ali Auliyev brews tea on flames fed by natural gas seeping from the ground in Azerbaijan. Photo courtesy of Statoil ASA.
Click here to enlarge image

By 1927 some 63% of wells were drilled with rotary techniques, and in 1940 the deepest wells of the Soviet Union were drilled at Gosvay to 10,300 ft.

By World War II, Baku was producing 72% of the oil the Soviets were using in the war effort, prompting Adolph Hitler to plot a takeover of the area. Fortunately the German army was defeated at Stalingrad before that could happen.

Bond, James Bond

Baku’s oil fields and interesting industry infrastructure, including “Oil Rocks” (Neft Dashlari), the world’s first offshore drilling operation, attracted moviemakers to locate the 1999 James Bond movie, “The World is not Enough,” in Azerbaijan. The film starred Pierce Brosnan and involves a scheme to control the world’s oil supply.

Oil Rocks, site of much action in the spy thriller, was built in 1947 about 45-50 km offshore. It extracts oil from the shallow-water portion of the Absheron geological trend and is a complete oil town with a population of 5,000, about 200 km of streets, schools, libraries, and eight-story apartments built on miles of wooden piers, dirt, and landfill in the Caspian Sea. Much of the antiquated operation, however, is dilapidated and falling into the sea, with many roads under water and waves lapping at the second-story windows of some dormitories.

The country is in need of funding to rehabilitate such structures. About 200 of the 600 wells are now inoperable or inaccessible, yet the site still produces over half of Azerbaijan’s total crude oil output. Foreign investment has enabled new processing and other structures to be grafted onto the operations.

A new chapter

This summer, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Turkey officially inaugurated the delivery of oil from the Caspian Sea to the Mediterranean via the 1,768-km Baku-Ceyhan-Tbilisi oil pipeline (see map, OGJ, June 27, 2005, p. 61).

In addition, BP PLC has begun line-fill of the 690 km South Caucasus Gas Pipeline from Shah Deniz field in the Caspian to Erzurum, Turkey. Gas is scheduled to reach the Georgian-Turkish border by the end of September.

With these exports, the Azerbaijani republic will begin writing a new chapter in the history of the land of fire, which will enable it to upgrade its aging oil infrastructure and improve the lives of its people.