How it began
Neft Dashlari, meaning Oil Rocks, is an oil field under the Caspian Sea off Azerbaijan, discovered in 1949 when the country was part of the Soviet Union. Work on the first exploratory well began in June 1949. The drilling base was made by towing the old ship Chvanov to the site and sinking it. A team led by Mikhail Kaverochkin drilled the well, and on November 7, 1949 it produced oil from about 1,000 meters at 700 barrels a day. The geologist Agha Kurban Aliyev had argued for the field, and Nikolay Baybakov supervised its development.
How it works
For the second well, seven surplus ships were sunk to form a base. Among them was the Zoroaster, an early oil tanker. From these artificial islands, steel trestles and stationary platforms were extended over the sea, carrying drilling rigs, pipelines, roads and housing. The complex grew to more than 200 stationary platforms linked by about 350 km of trestle roads. Wells are drilled from the platforms into the seabed, and an underwater pipeline built in 1981 carries the oil ashore.
What changed first
The first workers lived in the cabins of the sunken ships and then in one- and two-story houses on piles. After Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev visited in 1960, apartment blocks of five to nine stories were built on the platforms, and the site became a working town at sea.
What lasted
The American Association of Petroleum Geologists describes Oil Rocks as a milestone that pointed the way to modern offshore drilling. About 2,000 wells have been drilled there, and the field has yielded more than 1.1 billion barrels of oil and 455 billion cubic feet of associated gas.
Where it stands today
The field is run by the Azneft production unit of SOCAR, the State Oil Company of the Azerbaijan Republic. More than 300 wells still produce, at an average of about 35 barrels a day each, and remaining reserves are put at about 240 million barrels. SOCAR has updated the facilities, and the field is tied into the modern oil transport network of the Caspian.
