First Oil Boom
In 1871 Hovhannes Mirzoyev, an ethnic Armenian who was then an otkupchina monopolist, built the first wooden oil derrick followed by another the next year. Drilling was conducted primitively with a balance arm, whim and manual pump.
In the early 1870s the otkupschina system was abolished and oil lands were parceled out under an 1872 auction to local and Russian-born investors. In Balakhani more than 149 parcels of land were sold with other parcels being in Surakhani, Bibi-Heybet and Binagady. This year marked the beginning of oil drilling on a massive scale. On 13 June 1872 the largest oil gusher — "Vermishevsky" — blew on Balakhany field ". Within three months, it had produced 90 million poods (averaging 2,600 barrels (410 m3) of oil per day). By 1878 Bibi-Heybat field had its first oil gusher.
As a result there was flurry of financial activity and various bank societies and organization were created. In 1884, the oil barons in Baku established their own organization, the Oil Extractors Congress Council for the discussion of oil business. They created their own magazine, Neftyanoe Delo (Oil Business), a library, school, hospital, and pharmacy. For six years, the Council of Oil Extractors Congress was directed by Ludvig Nobel.
The oil industry greatly influenced the architectural appearance of Baku as a modern city. Administrative, social and municipal institutions were established which, in turn, made decisions about the city's illumination, roads, streets, buildings, telephone stations, and horse-drawn trolleys. Gardens and parks were laid out and hotels, casinos and beautiful stores were built.
First, exclusive rights to develop Baku oil fields were in the hands of Russian-registered businesses, and only in 1898 foreign companies were granted rights to explore and develop oil fields as well as to participate in annual bidding process. Between 1898 and 1903 British oil firms invested 60 mln rubles in Baku oil fields. Ethnic Armenians also contributed to the oil production and drilling around Baku. Armenians reportedly ran almost one-third of the region's oil industry by 1900. Such Armenians included G.M. Lianozov Sons, Adamov, Alexander Mantashev, Hovhannes Mirzoyan, and more.
Read more about this topic: Petroleum Industry In Azerbaijan
Famous quotes containing the words oil and/or boom:
“Courage, determination, and hard work are all very nice, but not so nice as an oil well in the back yard.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“California is a place in which a boom mentality and a sense of Chekhovian loss meet in uneasy suspension; in which the mind is troubled by some buried but ineradicable suspicion that things had better work here, because here, beneath that immense bleached sky, is where we run out of continent.”
—Joan Didion (b. 1935)