Dedicated to the Day of Oil and Gas Industry Workers
Many oil fields have been discovered in Russia. There is oil in the Volga region, the Caucasus, the Far East, and on the shelves of the Caspian and Baltic seas. But the main oil region of the country is the West Siberian oil and gas province. In terms of hydrocarbon reserves, Western Siberia exceeds all other Russian deposits combined. Involving the countless natural resources of Siberia in the industrial development required the dedicated labor of hundreds of thousands of people and an unprecedented concentration of material and technical resources. “In terms of its scale, the number of people involved, the intensity of physical and moral forces, this event is incomparable with other achievements of the second half of the twentieth century. Even space exploration, and even more so the Baikal-Amur Mainline, which was once declared the construction site of the century, is receding into the background,” says Valery Isaakovich Graifer, who in the 70s worked as the head of the economic planning department of the USSR Ministry of Oil Industry.
Valery Isaakovich Graifer
During the development of Western Siberia, the country could rely only on internal resources - Western technologies and foreign funding were practically inaccessible to the USSR. Of course, there is no direct analogy with current events, but given that this is not the first time that relations with the West have cooled, the experience of implementing complex scientific, technical and industrial projects without attracting foreign assistance remains relevant. However, even if the USSR could freely use foreign oil production technologies, not all of them could be applied in the unique natural and climatic conditions of Siberia. In the 70s of the last century, humanity learned to quite effectively develop deposits located in the steppe climate of Texas, the hot deserts of the Arabian Peninsula and the relatively warm North and Norwegian seas. None of the above is even close to the taiga and swamps of Western Siberia with severe winter frosts. The North Sea, in which the famous Brent field is located, despite its name, does not even freeze in winter - by Siberian standards it is just a resort!
Large-scale drainage of swamps in Central Russia began in the 20s of the last century, and by the time of the development of Siberian territories, a wealth of experience had been accumulated in this area. However, by that time the negative consequences of such intervention in the natural environment were already quite well known - fires arose in the drained peat at a depth of several meters, which continued to smolder even in winter. It was not possible to cope with peat fires even in the Moscow region, in the presence of roads and numerous fire brigades, what can we say about Siberia... It was decided not to allow land reclamation workers to approach the Siberian swamps, and to place oil rigs on small embankments. From each site, several wells should go underground in different directions, covering a large area like branched tree roots. To do this, it was necessary to drill inclined wells - a technology in the creation of which the priority of Soviet specialists is indisputable. In Europe and the USA, they learned to drill such wells only in the 80s, and since the 90s this technology has been used everywhere. A significant role in the spread of inclined and horizontal drilling techniques was played by the mass emigration to the West of scientists from the post-Soviet space, who sometimes left in entire teams, taking with them archives and documentation.
On December 11, 1969, the Central Committee of the CPSU and the Council of Ministers of the USSR adopted a resolution “On measures for the accelerated development of the oil industry in Western Siberia.” It was planned to increase oil production in Western Siberia to 100-120 million tons per year by 1975. The document stipulated that the development of the oil complex in Western Siberia should be carried out on the basis of the latest achievements of science and technology, using the most modern, highly efficient methods of field development and well drilling, with widespread automation and mechanization of all production processes. In the 70s, such a pace of creation of industrial infrastructure and development of deposits was achieved that history has never known. In 1970, the USSR ranked third in the world in oil production, and in 1974 it came out on top. A major role in the development of the region was played by Viktor Muravlenko, who in 1965 headed the main Tyumen production department for the oil and gas industry of the Economic Council of the RSFSR (Glavtyumenneftegaz). At his previous place of work, at Kuibyshevneft, he created a team of specialists who developed the technology of inclined cluster drilling. This experience was very useful in Siberia. For the development of a method of forced oil extraction from wells, Viktor Ivanovich Muravlenko, among a group of oil workers, received the Lenin Prize.
Vladimir Yurievich Filanovsky-Zenkov Together with Muravlenko, one of his subordinates, Vladimir Yuryevich Filanovsky-Zenkov, came to Siberia from Kuibyshev. He was appointed chief engineer, first deputy head of Glavtyumenneftegaz. Vladimir Yuryevich became one of the authors of the block construction of technological installations for oil fields, participated in the creation of a technology for the simultaneous and separate exploitation of several layers with one well. This technology can significantly reduce the size of capital investments in field development, and is currently widely used. The activities of Filanovsky-Zenkov were awarded the Lenin Prize, orders and medals of the USSR. An oil field in the Caspian Sea, which is currently being developed by LUKOIL, is named after him.
Recruiting workforces with qualified specialists in the remote northern region, where previously there were no oil or gas workers, has become a difficult task. “By 1964 - the beginning of industrial development of fields - in the Tyumen region there were only a few petroleum engineers from the former oil and gas production department of the Middle Ural Economic Council. The population density in areas of future oil and gas production was 38 times lower than the average for the RSFSR. The entire population of the Tyumen region in the early 1960s was three times less than a quarter century later - only 1.1 million people. By the nature of its activity, it previously had nothing to do with oil and gas production,” says Doctor of Historical Sciences Viktor Petrovich Karpov. To increase the influx of specialists, a financial incentive system was developed. “By the Decree of the Council of Ministers of the USSR dated January 29, 1965, those arriving in the oil and gas north were paid a one-time allowance and were paid for travel to their place of work. Future Tyumen oil workers were given double daily allowances (for the duration of the journey), and allowances in the amount of four monthly salaries. After the first two years of work, a salary increase of 10% was accrued, increasing by 10% for every two subsequent years worked. It was also provided for the preservation of living space at the previous place of residence for the period of validity of the employment contract. It was allowed to add 12 working days to the annual leave for workers in the oil and gas industry. All these measures helped attract the required number of workers to new industries,” continues Karpov.
Under the socialist equalization system, there were not many places where one could get high wages, and work in Siberia was one of those opportunities. “In subsequent years, the “ruble factor” was far from the only one, but the main one in attracting new workers. Most of those arriving in the North set a specific goal: to earn money for a car, for a cooperative apartment with furniture, for a dacha, and back. If the average salary of an employee of the oil and gas complex of the USSR by the end of the 1970s was approximately 200 rubles, then, taking into account the zone coefficient and the full “polar” (paid to those who worked starting from the latitudinal Ob region and further to the North for at least 5 years), wages in the Arctic North increased to 520 rubles. In addition, those working outside the city were paid “field pay”, an allowance “for the mobile nature of the work”, and bonuses for fulfilling and exceeding production plans. Electric welders in the seasonal time, when the “pipe went” (on the pipeline route), earned one and a half thousand or more rubles a month. For comparison, by the beginning of the 1980s, the salary of a full member of the USSR Academy of Sciences (academician) was 1,200 rubles per month, a novice engineer or assistant at a university was 120 rubles,” V. Karpov cites the current prices.
The pioneering geologist who explored Siberia in the 60s could live in tents and warm themselves by the fire. Vladimir Semyonovich Vysotsky composed a song about the romantic mood of those years: “One eccentric from the party of geologists told me, pouring mud out of his boot...” To accommodate hundreds of thousands of specialists, many of whom came with their families, it was necessary to create more comfortable living conditions. Valery Graifer Recalls: “You had to see it: complete swamps, roadlessness, huge deserted territories, truly “terra incognita.” In winter there are severe frosts, in summer there is heat and an omnipresent midge... The discoveries of geologists, whose work also cannot be overestimated, made it possible to build not only a colossal industrial complex beyond the Ural ridge, but also to inhabit the inhospitable Siberian land. The development of this territory necessitated the migration of more than a million people who had to be settled humanly. And in these difficult conditions, cities, towns, kindergartens, schools, Houses of Culture were built...” Not everyone could withstand the difficulties of Siberian life. “Staff turnover in the north of the Tyumen and Tomsk regions reached 50-80% per year in the initial period. The problem remained unresolved in subsequent decades. In the 1980s, at the enterprises of the Ministry of Oil and Gas Construction and the Ministry of Construction of the USSR in the Tyumen Region, staff turnover was 28.9% and 23.4%, respectively,” V. Karpov cites data.
“I invited you to my place to warn you: tomorrow you will see Tyumen in the light of day and, perhaps, some of you will greatly regret coming here. But I ask you very much: do not make hasty conclusions. In a few years, this region will become completely different,” said Viktor Muravlenko in October 1965, addressing a group of specialists who came to explore Siberia. And so it happened - just a few years later, modern residential areas began to be built on the site of barracks and temporary buildings. In 1966, the first five-story panel buildings appeared in Surgut; in 1967, oil workers moved into a permanent building in Nefteyugansk; in 1969, in Urai. Despite the high pace of construction, there was a catastrophic lack of quality housing. “Dugouts, embankments, tents, beams, kungs, and other temporary shelters are a common sight in the Tyumen north in the 1960s–80s. A beam is a wooden or metal trailer consisting of two, six square meters, compartments separated by a corridor. Each compartment contains four bachelors or a family. Happy families occupied an entire beam. On six squares there is their bedroom, on the other six there is a kitchen, a dining room, a children’s room,” this is how Konstantin Yakovlevich Lagunov, candidate of historical sciences, professor at Tyumen State University, who was a direct witness of those years, describes local life. The head of Glavtyumenneftegaz, Muravlenko, opposed shift work, believing that Western Siberia should become a home for people who came to develop this region. He demanded that managers live in the same place where the work collectives were located. Many did not like this, but contemporaries agree that such a requirement greatly contributed to the improvement of people's living conditions. The bosses felt everyday problems from their own experience and tried to do everything possible to eliminate them.
For living in oil fields, the Soviet industry developed mobile block “car-houses” that can be quickly installed in the required location. The production of mobile housing was launched at the Sokolsky DOZ (Volgograd region). After modifications based on the wishes of oil workers, the TsUB-2M appeared, outwardly similar to a huge barrel lying on its side. Such houses could withstand transportation off-road and, thanks to their good aerodynamic properties, were suitable for transportation by helicopters. TsUB-2M have an entrance hall, a kitchen, a shower room, are equipped with built-in furniture, the walls are decorated with beautiful wooden panels. Practice has shown that good insulation and the presence of autonomous water heating make it possible to live in them with relative comfort at ambient temperatures down to minus 65°C and winds up to 60 m/s. The unique properties of cylindrical houses turned out to be in demand outside the oil and gas complex. They have found application in places where there is no infrastructure and a harsh climate, and there are many such places in Russia. Nowadays, more efficient block structures are being manufactured for oil fields, but barrel houses are still preserved throughout the country. The village, assembled from 9 TsUB-2M, stands on the slope of Elbrus at an altitude of 3800 m. Modern climbers undergoing acclimatization and relaxing in barrel houses before climbing the mountain peak may not even know how and why these were developed structures.
Unfortunately, the development of Siberian deposits was not without “excesses,” one of the main reasons for which was the unprecedented rush. The oil workers were given the task not to wait for favors from nature, but to achieve an increase in production at any cost. The state desperately needed to increase foreign exchange earnings. Due to the failed economic reforms of 1957-1965, the country found itself on the verge of collapse, not only financial, but also social. An increase in retail prices for meat products and butter, along with a decrease in wage standards, caused a wave of strikes and civil unrest. In 1961, mass riots occurred in Krasnodar, in 1962 - in Novocherkassk. Despite tough measures against the rioters, the unrest did not subside. The shortage affected not only food, but also industrial goods - for example, only 5% of Soviet families in the early 60s had refrigerators at home. Unbearably difficult living conditions pushed desperate people to new protests, which took place in Riga, Kyiv, Chelyabinsk, Leningrad, Omsk, Kemerovo, Donetsk, Artemyevsk, Kramatorsk. The leadership of the USSR was forced to spend gold reserves to import food products, and at an increasing speed. If in 1953 250-300 tons of gold were spent on purchasing food abroad, then in 1963-1964 the export of gold reached 1244 tons. The gold reserves are not unlimited, the trend looked ominous, and the country’s leadership urgently needed a magic “magic wand.” Oil was perfect for this role.
In order to maximize the rate of oil extraction, in the 70-80s, water injection into the reservoir was widely used. Often this was done in volumes significantly exceeding those scientifically justified. The result of this was an increase in water cut in the fields, followed by a sharp drop in production. One example of irrational subsoil use is the giant Samotlor deposit. In the early 80s, it produced 150-160 million tons of oil per year, but the peak indicators were passed very quickly, after which a landslide decline began. In the second half of the 90s, annual production dropped below 20 million tons, and the water cut of well fluid jumped to 92%, in some places up to 98%. This means that the fluid coming to the surface from the well consists of only 2% oil, and 98% is water previously injected into the formation. Nature did not forgive the mistakes made; the field began to return to people the water so generously pumped into it. During its operation, only 2.7 billion tons of oil were extracted from the bowels of Samotlor, with geological reserves of 7.1 billion tons. A significant amount of oil has been lost to development and will remain underground forever.
Industry specialists immediately understood the consequences of excessive intensification of oil production, but they could do nothing to counteract the pressure from Moscow. Says Gennady Iosifovich Shmal, who in the early 70s worked in Siberia in party positions, and since 1978 in the Ministry of Construction of Oil and Gas Industry Enterprises: “This was the policy preached by certain officials from Moscow: “More oil with little money!” Yes, if only they “preached”! They put pressure with terrible force, removed them from their positions, saying: “You don’t understand the policies of the party and the government.” This is how the head of NGDU Pravdinskneft, G.G., was removed. Remeev is an experienced oil worker. And he’s not the only one. M.N. Safiullin, L.I. Vyazovtsev, R.K. Khairov, A.V. Usoltsev. This is not a complete list of “undesirables” and “dissidents.” Years have passed, and now it is clear who is right. “Limiters” - those who advocated for reasonable production limits, including the most competent specialists Yu.B. Fain, N.P. Dunaev, “were and today remain in our memory true patriotic oil workers.”
And yet, despite some mistakes made, the creation of the oil and gas complex in Western Siberia gave a huge leap both to the development of the region and to the economy of the entire country. Between 1960 and 1970, oil production in the USSR doubled - from 148 million tons per year to 353 million tons per year. In 1980, production doubled again - to 603 million tons. Oil, petroleum products and natural gas became the basis of Soviet exports. In the period from 1975 to the end of the 80s, the USSR annually supplied 100–115 million tons of oil abroad. Revenues received from energy exports have significantly improved the lives of citizens. The assortment of food products in stores has significantly improved, high-quality clothing and shoes, and imported household appliances have appeared. The funds were used not only for consumption; equipment was purchased abroad to create industrial enterprises. Based on Western technologies, VAZ (1966) and KAMAZ (1969) were created. In 1974, the first Pepsi-Cola bottling plant opened in Novorossiysk, and in 1976, chewing gum factories opened in Yerevan and Rostov-on-Don. The term “import substitution” had not yet been coined, but this process was actually underway.
Siberian cities received a powerful incentive for development. The population of Surgut in 1959 was 6.0 thousand people, in 1970 - 34.0 thousand people, in 1979 - 107.3 thousand people. As of 2016, this figure reached 348 thousand people. A little slower, but still at an impressive rate, the population of Tyumen, the first Russian city in Siberia, grew - 150.2 thousand in 1959, 268.5 thousand in 1970, 359.0 thousand in 1979, 720.6 thousand. Now. New cities appeared, such as Urai, Nizhnevartovsk, Noyabrsk, Kogalym, Nyagan. Settlements in Siberia have received reliable communications with other regions of the country. In 1966, construction began on the Yugorskaya railway, running from Tyumen through Tobolsk to Surgut. The new railway was declared an all-Union Komsomol construction project, and hundreds of student groups from all over the USSR went to Western Siberia. The section, passing through forest-steppe areas from Tyumen to Tobolsk, was built in just a year. It was much more difficult for the builders to travel kilometers through the swamps and create a complex of bridges across the Ob and its channels, but by 1975 the first trains arrived in Surgut, and in 1976 - in Nizhnevartovsk. Air travel developed rapidly. An airport opened in Nizhnevartovsk in 1965, in Khanty-Mansiysk in 1967, and in Tyumen in 1968. Even small cities such as Urai or Nyagan received their own “air gates”. “And the earth came to life, and at night I remember dancing people on that land...” wrote Vladimir Vysotsky, who visited Tyumen in 1968.
Denis Zakharov
Back in the 1930s, when the forecast about the existence of oil on the eastern slope of the Ural mountain range was put forward in 1932 by the founder of Soviet petroleum geology, academician Ivan Gubkin
The second development of Siberia is an oil epic that gave the country a wealth of Siberian oil fields. The fact that there is oil in Western Siberia was said in the early 30s and earlier. However, the first gushers of large fields that produced industrial oil began to flow in the early 60s.
Geologists set out to look for oil almost immediately after the Great Patriotic War. The issue became especially acute in the late 50s, when the level of oil production in the “Second Baku” - Bashkiria and the Volga region - began to gradually decline.
The first geologists went to Siberia back in the 30s, when the forecast about the existence of oil on the eastern slope of the Ural mountain range was put forward in 1932 by the founder of Soviet petroleum geology, Academician Ivan Gubkin.
On April 21, 1948, Order No. 108 was signed by the Main Directorate of Petroleum Geology of the USSR Ministry of Geology “On the development of geological exploration work for oil and gas in Western Siberia and emergency assistance to the Central West Siberian Oil Exploration Expedition - on drilling reference wells.”
On June 17, 1948, a new order was issued by the same ministry, No. 375 - “On approval of the West Siberian expedition for exploration of oil and natural gases - year-round.” At the end of the 50s of the twentieth century, a geological exploration expedition began work in the Tyumen expanses.
Soviet geologists drilled the first well in 1948 - it is located almost in the center of modern Tyumen, on Melnikaite Street. Instead of oil, a well of 2 thousand meters yielded mineral water, but this did not stop the search for oil and gas in Western Siberia.
The main directions of geological exploration work were discussed at the end of November 1950 in Novosibirsk at a meeting of geologists, geophysicists, and oil workers of the Ministry of Geology and the USSR Academy of Sciences.
It was decided to cover the West Siberian Lowland with a dense network of reference deep wells and dissect it from end to end with geophysical profiles.
They began searching for oil and gas in the south of Western Siberia, in Omsk, Tomsk, and then exploration began in the north of the West Siberian Lowland. The discovery of the first oil and gas province in Western Siberia was announced by a gas fountain that erupted from the reference well R-1 near the village of Berezovo.
The well, at the direction of geologist Alexander Bystritsky, was drilled by a team led by foreman Vasily Melnikov.
They said that the gas fountain began to flow by pure chance, saying that the drilling crew had already finished work and was about to leave the well.
However, this is not so - luck and “happy accidents” always accompany those who have carried out long-term, systematic work, and who have worked hard on the task at hand. And especially to those who have a huge state behind them, which has concentrated its forces on solving the issue of finding the oil riches of Siberia.
The names of those who found the first oil fields are written in history. In inhumane conditions, without transport equipment - where they landed, they began to drill, and oil deposits were found.
In the north of the Tyumen region, on the banks of the Konda, the head of one of the drilling crews, Semyon Urusov, found the first oil. Well 2P, drilled in the area of the small village of Shaim, gave it a little - only one and a half tons per day. The second well was more productive - 12 tons of oil per day.
There, on the banks of the Konda, when geologists still doubted whether there was oil here, on June 21, 1960, a large fountain erupted - from well number 6P, almost 400 tons of oil per day. Later, for this discovery, Semyon Urusov was awarded the title of Hero of Socialist Labor, and his team received the honorary title “Best Drilling Team of the USSR Ministry of Geology.” This is how the first deposit in Western Siberia was discovered.
The first industrial oil in Western Siberia was produced by the Megionskoye field; the first gusher appeared there on March 21, 1961. A well was drilled that discovered one of the largest and first deposits in Siberia by geologist, future Doctor of Geological and Mineralogical Sciences, Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences (1991) and Hero of Socialist Labor Farman Salmanov.
There is almost a detective story connected with this drilling in the Surgut region: work on the well began almost without permission and secretly. From 1955 to 1957, Salmanov worked as the head of the Plotnikovskaya and Gryaznenskaya oil and gas exploration expeditions in the Kemerovo and Novosibirsk regions. The idea was that there was oil in Kuzbass, which Salmanov was not convinced of.
Leaving the search in Kuzbass, Salmanov secretly took his geological party to Surgut in August 1957. The order to transfer the party was later signed retroactively, allowing the group to remain where the geologist decided.
When the first well in the area of the village of Megion produced a gusher, Salmanov wrote to Moscow: “In Megion, at well No. 1, a gush of oil was obtained from a depth of 2180 meters. Clear? Sincerely, Farman Salmanov."
After a fountain began to flow from the second well in the Ust-Balyk area, Salmanov sent a radiogram to his superiors: “The well is pounding according to all the rules.” Big oil has been found in Siberia.
Later, other fields were discovered, more than a dozen in total, including the supergiant Samotlor - the sixth largest oil field in the world. Oil production in the Volga-Ural region continued to decline, and by the mid-1967s the difference was completely covered by Western Siberia.
Oil was not considered a significant resource until the advent of automobiles in the early 20th century. Half a century later, the need for gasoline led to a sharp increase in the production of “black gold”. This happened so quickly that from 1957 to 1966 more oil was produced and refined than in the previous hundred years. It is at this time that the development of Western Siberian deposits occurs.
On October 4, 1959, the Tyumenskaya Pravda newspaper wrote: “On September 25, at the Mulymyinskaya structure, near the village of Shaim, an oil-bearing reservoir was discovered at a depth of 1405 meters, the daily flow of which, according to preliminary data, is over 1 ton of light oil... The Tyumen region will soon the future may become a new Soviet Baku! In March 1961, the first well in Western Siberia produced oil.
About how the first West Siberian oil was searched for and extracted, about modern methods of subsoil development - in the material of "RG".
Blood of the earth
The world's first oil well was drilled in the Bibi-Heybat tract (6 versts from Baku) in 1848. Before this, oil was extracted from wells. The first oil well in Russia using a mechanical percussion method, 198 meters deep, was drilled in the Kuban by engineer Aradilion Novosiltsev in 1864. The transition from the manual method of drilling wells to the mechanical percussion method is considered to be the beginning of the birth of the oil and gas industry.
The only way to accurately determine the presence or absence of oil in the area under study is to drill a well using a drilling rig. The drilled well is secured with pipes, which gives it additional strength and facilitates oil production.
Crude oil extracted from a well is a warm, dark-colored liquid with a yellowish, brownish or greenish tint and a pungent odor. It is lighter than water and consists of liquid and, to a lesser extent, solid and gaseous hydrocarbons. The latter affect the quality of oil: the lighter it is, the higher its heat transfer.
In Western Siberia, by the way, drilling with electric drills is not used: geological and technological conditions (unstable rocks) are such that drilling with hydraulic downhole motors is preferable. This makes it possible to achieve simplicity in the well design due to the fact that the drill pipe string does not rotate, thereby eliminating the possibility of slides and collapses of the well walls.
Modern drilling rigs amaze with their power and impressive appearance. The first devices were much more modest. However, despite the development of technology, towers sometimes have to be installed manually, knee-deep in a marshy swamp.
“There is an opinion that oil production is a simple matter: just drill a “hole” and the oil will flow by itself. But this is not at all true. A driller will never call a well a “hole”: this is a complex engineering structure, the construction of which requires enormous experience ", knowledge, physical and intellectual efforts, huge financial resources. For this, a large number of people of various specialties are involved - transport workers, builders, geologists, drillers, field workers, geophysicists - without whom it is impossible to drill a well," say experienced oil workers.
The penetration speed is 30 centimeters per hour. Deep wells can reach several kilometers. It takes weeks, even years, to reach oil. At the same time, in order to start drilling, you need to mount the tower itself, and before that, transport several tons of metal structures to the site.
Typically in Western Siberia the depth of wells is 1.5-2.5 kilometers, in Eastern Siberia 2-3 kilometer wells are drilled, and in the Volga region the depth of a well can reach 4.5 kilometers.
When constructing a new well, not only drillers are involved, but also dozens of other services: seismologists, repairmen, production workers and many other specialists.
What does the well drilling process consist of? Drilling rigs are used to drill a well. First, a bit is lowered into the well, which will do all the main work. The bit is screwed onto the drill pipes, and this entire structure is called the drill string. During drilling, drilling fluid passes through the pipes, which is cooled by the bit and brings the drilled rock to the surface. The solution is then cleared of rock.
If necessary (if there is a danger of collapses), the well is strengthened with casing pipes and drilled with a smaller bit. Typically, the process of drilling a well takes from one month to a year: it all depends on the geological features of the area, the density of oil, the length of the well, the conscientiousness of the workers and other factors. When the well is drilled, a casing is lowered into it, and concrete is poured into the space between the column and the walls of the well to prevent the walls from collapsing.
Evolution of search
Drilling is the most effective way to find oil. True, it is very long and expensive. In Siberia, one well can cost up to a billion rubles (in Tatarstan - 25-30 million). It is difficult to imagine the degree of disappointment of oil workers if, despite such labor costs and cash injections, the well does not produce oil. This often happened before, when they were looking for “black gold” exclusively through drilling wells.
Today, the equipment used to search for oil is much more compact and cheaper: explosives are placed in drilled mini-wells and detonated. Then the principle of the locator works: the blast wave is reflected differently from different rocks, otherwise it will be reflected from the oil. The most modern technology for searching for oil reservoirs is that special vehicles on tracks move to the approximate location of the deposits. The vibration created by their bottoms makes it possible to determine the presence of minerals. Just recently one could only dream of such seismic exploration.
Another interesting search method is “sniffing”. Biochemical studies are needed in order to understand whether there are hydrocarbons in the oil trap that seismic exploration detects or not. The sensor with the sorbent is placed in a shallow hole (an artificial cylindrical depression in the ground or rock - ed.) and closed. After two weeks it is removed, and an analysis shows whether it is worth drilling a well in this place.
However, even with all the variety of modern methods for searching for oil, it is possible to detect it on an increasingly more modest scale than in the 1940-60s. Even the relatively new West Siberian deposits are being depleted. Experts say: the era of light oil, both in consistency and in terms of production, is ending.
Intelligence data
Yuri Krizanich, a Croatian theologian, philosopher and historian, exiled to Tobolsk for supporting the Greek Catholic Church, wrote about oil manifestations in Siberia - about the outcrops of bitumen shale, oil satellites in the Ob basin - at the end of the 17th century.
The prophetic idea of the existence of oil on the eastern slope of the Ural mountain range was put forward in 1932 by the founder of Soviet petroleum geology, Academician Ivan Gubkin: “I believe that in our eastern Urals, along the edge of the great West Siberian depression... structures favorable for accumulation may be encountered oil." Soon the assumptions received the first practical confirmation, and at the end of the 50s of the twentieth century, a geological exploration expedition began work in the Tyumen expanses.
Even the outbreak of the Great Patriotic War did not stop the work. Only in 1942, when German tanks broke through to Stalingrad, did exploration work in Western Siberia come to a standstill.
Construction of the first reference well - Tyumen - began in 1948. The study of the geological section has established that the conditions for the formation of hydrocarbon deposits here are favorable. In total, 11 such reference wells were drilled in the Tyumen region.
In the early 1960s, the region's first oil reserves were discovered, the main one being the supergiant Samotlor field, discovered in 1965, with recoverable reserves of about 14 billion barrels (2 billion tons). Data on the discovery of the first large deposits in Western Siberia came at a more opportune time than ever: production in the Volga-Ural region was steadily declining.
In the summer of 1960, when Tyumen wells produced the first commercial oil, Anatoly Trofimuk, director of the Institute of Geology and Geophysics of the Siberian Branch of the Academy of Sciences, emphasized: “For a number of years, our subsoil explorers managed to discover oil deposits in different areas of the Asian part of the USSR. But only Tyumen geologists and drillers "have produced oil that has undeniable industrial potential. Based on the data now available, we can say that Konda will become a major oil field in the country in the very near future."
In May 1964, the tanker opened the first oil navigation in the history of Western Siberia.
By 1975, it was planned to increase oil production in Western Siberia to 100-120 million tons per year. This goal seemed, according to the recollections of experts, unattainable: in Tataria, the main oil-producing region of the country at that time, it took 23 years to reach the figure of 100 million tons per year, and the Siberians had to achieve this in five years.
The land is harsh
Oil production in Russia is a complex matter. In Saudi Arabia or Iraq, for example, you just need to drill one well in the sand, and you can freely approach it. In Russia, oil reserves are concentrated in swampy areas, and the difference between summer and winter temperatures reaches several tens of degrees.
Since it is impossible to drill a well in a swamp, you first need to cut down the forest, drain the swamp, fill the area with sand, and only then drilling begins. Moreover, the well is drilled not vertically, but at an angle.
The local region is huge: the south of the oil and gas-bearing lands of the West Siberian Plain is as far from their northern borders as Arkhangelsk is from Astrakhan in the European part of the country. Overcoming these distances is much more difficult than in the European part: the territory is sparsely populated, covered with impenetrable taiga and holds the world record for swampiness.
The richest deposits lie under the thickest peat bogs. Added to all this is the severity of the climate, and to the north of the Siberian Uvals there is also permafrost. Building roads, settlements, oil and gas pipelines here is a daunting task. However, as oil workers say, these circumstances gave rise to very interesting technical projects. Thus, hovercraft drilling rigs floating above the swamps were invented, and a method was invented to lower the temperature of the road surface by evaporating natural gas in the porous mass (thus, the permafrost does not melt and a thousand-kilometer artificial skating rink can connect remote areas of oil fields with bases even in summer).
Gennady Shmal, one of the creators of the oil and gas complex in Western Siberia, told how difficult it was for the pioneers to turn the wild swampy region into oases of civilization and high culture: in the 1960s, at the very beginning of the development of Tyumen’s riches, the British Financial Times, relishing the difficulties of taiga construction, ironically: “The Tyumen Bolsheviks are citing huge numbers of production prospects for 1975 and later years. But let’s see if they can achieve what they dream of...”. We did it!. In 1960-70 people lived in barracks and trailers for years in order to bring multimillion-dollar profits to the country's treasury. Now oil pioneers remember this time as a time of heroes and exploits.
The pace of development of deposits in the Tyumen region was on average 2-3 times higher than in Tataria and Bashkiria. With difficulty, and sometimes even at the risk of their lives, landing in the impenetrable taiga from helicopters, the pioneers almost everywhere were perhaps the first people to set foot on this land.
The growth of production in Western Siberia predetermined the increase in production in the Soviet Union from 7.6 million barrels (more than a million tons) per day in 1971 to 9.9 million barrels (about 1.4 million tons) per day in 1975. By the mid-1970s, production in the Western Siberian region filled the gap left by falling production in the Volga-Ural region.
Taste and color
It would seem that oil produced in difficult conditions is quite expensive. However, the paradox is that the cost of Tyumen (and Tomsk) oil is lower than that of Tatarstan, for example. “This area happily combines favorable geological features - the density of reserves over large areas is very high and, in addition, oil lies at very convenient depths for production. Western Siberia is also distinguished by a high proportion of large fields that allow production to be organized at low cost. For example, one Such a field - Samotlor - is capable of annually producing 4 times more oil than all the fields of the Absheron Peninsula,” explains the yearbook “Earth and People” for 1972.
Many of the fields being put into operation, according to the international classification, belonged to the category of unique ones, producing an abnormally high well yield: the wells drilled in them produce a lot of oil, the quality of which is much higher than that of the Volga-Urals.
Oil produced in Western Siberia appears as an almost transparent liquid. For comparison, the one “found” in Tatarstan is black, viscous, Samara and Orenburg are red, sometimes orange. And exotic-looking green oil is produced in Iran.
Oil from the West Siberian oil and gas basin is characterized by a low content of sulfur (up to 1.1 percent), and paraffin (less than 0.5 percent), a high content of gasoline fractions (40-60 percent) and an increased amount of volatile substances.
"... They open the valves, and a black jet hits the prepared container - the tank - with force. A beautiful, greenish-brown, aromatic liquid with golden foam. Can any of the most expensive perfumes compare to the smell of oil for an oil worker?! No, their smell compared to oil, it’s nothing. We take it in the palm of our hand, rub it, smell it. We even want to taste it. Joy, great joy. After all, this is the first Siberian oil...", recalls honorary mineral exploration specialist Raoul-Yuri Ervier.
West Siberian oil, from relatively young fields, smells - as experts say - more refined: it does not have the smell of sulfur, like in the Volga and Ural oil. However, experts can accurately predict: Siberia will suffer the same fate as Tatarstan: every year there will be less and less Devonian oil, and more carbonaceous oil. Those who have tasted oil on the tongue - in the literal sense - say: it is sweetish, with sourness. It is sulfur that gives this sourness. Sulfur also reduces the price of Russian export oil of the Urals brand, which is obtained by mixing heavy, high-sulfur oil from the Urals and Volga region with light West Siberian oil Siberian Light in the pipeline system.
Oil production in Russia finally stopped falling in 1997. Independent experts believe that Western Siberia has residual reserves of more than 150 billion barrels (more than 20 billion tons), and production levels could be three times higher than now. But the situation is complicated by poor reservoir conditions in already developed fields and the fact that Western Siberian fields usually consist of a larger number of oil-bearing formations than fields in other regions, which complicates production.
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Oil production in Western Siberia, Russia's main production region, will decline until 2019 to approximately 290 million tons (from 300 million in 2015). Experts believe that after 2019, oil production in the region will begin to recover, and by 2035 it will again reach 300 million tons thanks to new discoveries and the development of hard-to-recover reserves. By 2025-2030, oil production in Russia, under favorable external and internal conditions, could reach 580-585 million tons per year.
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The history of the discovery of Big Oil in the second half of the twentieth century is one of the brightest pages in the history of the USSR, which fully showed its capabilities that emerged as a result of the rapid development of the country in the 30-50s.
"The mineral resources will not fail if people do not fail"
Academician Ivan Gubkin.
Background.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, only one place with large oil reserves was known in Russia - the Baku region. Baku oil fields at that time made it possible to fully satisfy the country's needs for liquid fuel and even sell it for export. This continued until the events of 1917 and the civil war that followed.
However, after the civil war and the NEP period, industrialization that began at a rapid pace required a significant increase in oil production. And the situation began to change, since by that time the Baku oil fields could no longer provide a significant increase in oil production. In addition, they were located quite close to the border and in the event of war they could be subject to air bombing (the British and French in 1940 developed plans to attack Baku) or the threat of direct capture. Therefore, the country needed a new oil base in the interior of the territory, which could become a reliable reserve that would meet the fuel needs regardless of the state of the Baku region. And soon the first steps in this direction were taken.
The pioneer who first suggested the presence of oil in the areas east of the Volga was the founder of Soviet petroleum geology, Academician Ivan Mikhailovich Gubkin. Back in 1918, he became a member of the Main Oil Committee, then headed the shale committee and studied the Kursk magnetic anomaly. In the early 30s, he published his most famous fundamental work, “The Doctrine of Petroleum,” which summarized all the knowledge about petroleum geology available at that time. And it was here that he first suggested the presence of oil in the Volga region and beyond, beyond the Urals. He also voiced his assumptions in his famous report at the Ural-Kuzbass session of the USSR Academy of Sciences, held in 1932.
Academician I.M. Gubkin.
It was Gubkin who organized the first reconnaissance work on the eastern bank of the Volga. And soon his theory received its first confirmation. In 1932, the Ishimbayevskoye field was discovered in this area. It became the first sign of the movement to the east, which lasted for several decades.
First exploration well.
One of the supporters of exploration beyond the Volga was the Deputy People's Commissar of the Oil Industry (since September 1940) Nikolai Konstantinovich Baibakov, who then became the Minister of the Oil Industry of the USSR. He supported geologists in every possible way, because he perfectly understood the need to have a reliable reserve before a major war was approaching the country.
N.K. Baibakov.
As a result, even before the start and already during the war, reconnaissance was carried out in Tatarstan and Bashkiria, which made it possible to create the long-awaited “Second Baku.” Full-scale oil production began here in the second half of the 40s. Soon, in the early 50s, it already surpassed Baku first in terms of production volume.
History of Siberian oil.
However, reconnaissance parties moved further east, to the Urals itself. And in 1948 a qualitatively new step was taken. On April 21, the Minister of Geology of the USSR I. Malyshev signed order No. 108 on the start of large-scale prospecting work to discover oil and gas in Western Siberia. In March of the same year, the Tyumen oil exploration expedition was founded.
The first exploration well R-1 was drilled in 1948 on the territory of Tyumen by a team led by B.N. Melik-Karamova. The first pancake turned out to be lumpy - the well turned out to be empty. However, the first step to Siberia was taken.
The search rigs moved further north. And then, 4 years later, an incident occurred that proved the correctness of Academician Gubkin’s assumptions. On September 21, 1953, a powerful release of natural gas occurred at a drilling rig located near the village of Berezovo. To a certain extent, the prospectors were lucky - by this time, the search work in this area was almost completed. However, life shows that only the most persistent are lucky. And in this case, people’s perseverance was fully rewarded.
Now the search efforts have become even more persistent. On January 1, 1958, the Khanty-Mansiysk comprehensive geological exploration expedition was organized as part of it. It was to her share that the next big success fell in September 1959. Exploration well No. 6 (by mistake, it was installed about two kilometers from the planned location), drilled by a team of drilling master Semyon Urusov, which consisted of only seven people, discovered a large oil and gas reservoir near the village of Shaim north of Tyumen. This was the first large oil in Siberia that was available for industrial development.
Geologists' settlement in the Tyumen region. 60s.
Now new discoveries followed one after another. Over the course of several years, a number of large oil and gas fields were discovered in the vicinity of the city of Surgut - Western Surgutskoye, Megionskoye, Ust-Balykskoye, Punginskoye and others. And in 1962, the first natural gas field in the Arctic was discovered - the Tazovskoye field (near the village of Taz). And already in 1964, oil production was twice as high as planned - 209 thousand tons versus 100 thousand according to plan. And the very first batch of Siberian oil arrived at the Omsk plant on June 5, 1964 at 19:00.
Oil derrick.
All this became the reason for the adoption on December 4, 1963 by the Council of Ministers of the USSR of the resolution “On the organization of preparatory work for the industrial development of open oil and gas fields and the further development of geological exploration work in the Tyumen region.” It was this directive that gave rise to a full-scale comprehensive program for the development of Western Siberia and the Far North.
And in the same year, construction began on the first main pipeline from the Siberian oil field. It was the Shaim - Tyumen oil pipeline, which was successfully completed in 1965.
Laying the Surgut-Nizhnevartovsk oil pipeline.
Oil pipeline Surgut - Nizhnevartovsk.
This year has become truly epoch-making in the history of Siberia. It was then that one of the world’s largest oil fields, Samotlor, was discovered in the Nizhnevartovsk region of the Khanty-Mansiysk Okrug (industrial production began here in 1969). In the same year, searchers discovered the giant Zapolyarnoye gas condensate field. And just a year later, the world's largest Urengoy oil and gas condensate field was discovered. The following year, 1967, the Medvezhye and Nadymskoye gas fields were discovered, and in 1969, geologists gave the country a new huge gas condensate field - the Yamburgskoye field.
Oil gusher in the Tyumen region.
Drilling rig on Lake Samotlor.
Thanks to the hard work of geologists, the planned organization of exploration, and the comprehensive development of infrastructure in which the whole country participated, in just a dozen years the USSR was brought to first place in the world in gas reserves and made it one of the leading countries in oil reserves. The country's energy independence was ensured for decades to come.
Monument to the conquerors of Samotlor in Nizhnevartovsk.
Already in 1970, 31 million tons of oil were produced in the fields of Western Siberia, in 1975 148 million tons were produced, and 1980 set a new record - 312 million tons of Siberian oil.
Western Siberia itself began to develop at an unprecedented pace. Old villages and towns turned into large cities in a matter of years. New cities arose in place of the working settlements of geologists and drillers. Thus, Noyabrsk was founded in 1976, and became a city in 1982. And by its tenth anniversary, more than 80 thousand people already lived here.
The first flight plane lands in Noyabrsk.
As for Surgut, founded back in 1594, by the mid-80s its population increased from 6 to 250 thousand people in just two decades. And at the same time, all the infrastructure necessary for the life of the townspeople was created - schools, hospitals, cinemas and libraries. The transport network also developed. Thus, the railway from Tyumen, begun in 1965, reached Surgut and Nizhnevartovsk in the mid-70s.
The first temporary railway station of Noyabrsk.
Noyabrsk from a bird's eye view. Late 70s.
Another city, Nefteyugansk, was founded in 1961 as a scout village. Having become a city in 1967, it grew and developed rapidly. In the second half of the 80s, its population was already 90 thousand people.
This is how Nefteyugansk began.
Cinema. 70s.
One of the new areas of the city.
Young residents of the city.
In the second half of the 80s, thanks to the comprehensive development of Western Siberia, oil and gas production reached its peak. At the same time, the construction of the Urengoy-Pomary-Uzhgorod gas pipeline was completed, through which natural gas was exported to Western Europe. And even earlier, in the 60s - the first half of the 70s, the Druzhba and Druzhba-2 main oil pipelines were built, through which oil was exported to the CMEA countries.
Surgut. New railway station. Second half of the 80s.
Along with the infrastructure associated with oil and gas production, the social sphere also developed. For example, in Nizhnevartovsk in 1979 (it became a city in 1972), 20 children's sports grounds and 8 hospitals were built. And in 1987, there were 61 kindergartens and 4 specialized children's libraries in Nizhnevartovsk.
Well, then August 1991 came... And behind it came the nineties themselves, which became, in an apt expression, “a dark strip of night in which vile creatures rule.” And these same creatures got what the whole country had been building for a quarter of a century. They got it, as they thought and still think, for eternal use.
However, history has an amazing property - it is merciless towards those who do not learn its lessons. And a hundred years ago, the nouveau riche of that time hardly suspected what events would unfold in just a few years, as a result of which many of them would have, at best, to be content with the modest role of waiters in Parisian or Shanghai restaurants.
And now, when new times of great change are coming more and more clearly, these “masters of life” should not renounce either the scrip or prison. And the fairest thing would be to send them, in order to atone for guilt, to work on the development of Eastern Siberia. And there will be a lot of work there...
