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Baku - Oil and Urbanism
Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan and formerly part of the Russian Empire and Soviet Union, is the original oil city, with oil and urbanism thoroughly intertwined—economically, politically, and physical—in the city’s fabric. Baku saw its first oil boom in the late nineteenth century, driven by the Russian branch of the Nobel family modernizing the oil fields around Baku as local oil barons poured their new wealth into building a cosmopolitan city center. During the Soviet period, Baku became the site of an urban the shaping of an oil city of socialist man. That project included Neft Dashlari, a city built on trestles in the Caspian Sea and designed to house thousands of workers, schools, shops, gardens, clinics, and cinemas as well as 2,000 oil rigs, pipelines, and collecting stations. Today, as it heads into an uncertain post-oil future, Baku’s planners and business elites regard the legacy of its past as a resource that sustains new aspirations and identities. Richly illustrated with historical images and archival material, this book tells the story of the city, paying particular attention to how the disparate spatial logics, knowledge bases, and practices of oil production and urban production intersected, affected, and transformed one another creating an urban cultural environment unique among extraction sites. The book also features a new photo essay by celebrated photographer Iwan Baan.
320 pages, Hardcover
First published October 25, 2012
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January 20, 2022
This is a very interesting volume, published in 2018 about the intersecting history of oil and urban development of the city of Baku - in Azerbaijan - from its beginnings to the present era of gentrification and displacement. Once technology enabled Baku´s plentiful oil to be distilled into kerosene, the city boomed in the 1870s - development was initially chaotic but eventually, as more money began to pour in as more products were extracted from petroleum, the city began to acquire a definite urban shape. Oil barons recycled some of their profits into contributions to the civic fabric, by building cultural and educational institutions (the same way oil and other industrial barons in the US such as the Rockefellers and Carnegie funded concert halls, libraries, universities etc). There was an effort to upgrade the workforce but Baku like the rest of the Russian Empire, Azerbaijan was ripe for revolution by the time the 20th Century rolled around and Stalin himself was a labor organizer in Baku in those early years of the 20th Century. Azerbaijan enjoyed a brief period of independence -- around two years -- after the fall of the Russian Empire and before the Red Army marched in to claim it for the Bolsheviks. During the subsequent 70 years of Soviet control, there were more efforts to improve the lives of the people, by constructing housing projects, schools, parks and many other amenities, and so forth. The Soviet period though ended in a dead end of stagnation, as technology and investment lagged and the city and its oil infrastructure became increasingly rundown. With the fall of communism, Azerbaijan declared independence and immediately began welcoming foreign investment and with it improved/upgraded technology such as for the construction of deep sea oil platforms in the Caspian Sea. Eventually, the city became prey to the same post industrial gentrification forces that have beset many other cities around the world, as recent urban planners have decided that the city must be separated from its traditional oil business industrial base and become instead a tourist mecca, with industry and oil and even universities displaced to outlying areas of the city, which is where the industrial workers will also have to move. And so the city has come full circle - from bustling urban center where oil men might rub shoulders with industrial or oil workers, to an oil rich city featuring showy architectural mega projects designed by international star architects, yet devoid of the vibrancy that the former industrial working class residents as well as students and business people lent it. Still, the city at least has the foresight to realize that the oil economy cannot last forever and economic diversification, perhaps focusing on tourism and service industries, is the way to go.
The book contains a lot of very interesting information that was new to me at least, as well as tons of fascinating photographs of the changing face of Baku over the past 100 plus years. I really had no idea that Baku was the center of oil production world wide at one point and still produces oil and gas even today. The Soviet Union expanded oil production to other parts of Russia eventually - especially during World War II: To deny Hitler access to Baku´s oil - although Hitler never got to Baku - much of the oil industry of Baku was dismantled and transferred in a thousand boats across the Caspian Sea to Kazakhstan, and the existing oil wells of Baku were sealed with concrete at Stalin's direction. An action that more or less destroyed the wells since it was so difficult to re-activate them afterwards. But by then, oil exploration along the Volga River and in W. Siberia was underway - with many new oil fields producing oil and gas. Baku never again regained its previous oil primacy but it did continue as a center of oil-related machinery manufacturing and oil technology research and innovation. As stated above, this innovation eventually petered out such that technology was woefully out of date and the city quite poor by the time the Soviet Union collapsed. Its fortunes have now revived with the partnerships with foreign oil companies such as Exxon, BP Royal Dutch Shell and so forth - which have built deep sea oil extraction platforms in the Caspian Sea. Meanwhile, pipelines now connect oil producing areas in Baku/Absheron Peninsula and Russia to markets in Europe as well as ports in the Russian Far East, so that oil from Baku and Russia can be exported everywhere via pipeline and ship. The question for all the oil-producing countries is planning for a future without oil - how can they still benefit in the fast-approaching new environment?
I would recommend this book to anyone who wishes to find out about the history of the city of Baku. The reader will learn quite a bit about this very interesting metropolis and along with the commentary about urbanism, will find out about the oil history of Baku and oil history in general, which is also interesting - especially in light of today's critical energy debates. The book contains numerous interesting maps and charts - so information is conveyed in a number of different ways, via historic photos, urban planning maps, aerial photos, photos of architectural models of buildings and the city itself, and so forth. It seems that as long as oil revenue continues to pour into Azerbaijan, it will have the money to continue with its current rather grandiose modernization scheme for Baku.
Here are the quotes:
¨By 1900...the oil business...was modernized by European producers and investors...the Russian branch of the Nobel family...the French Rothschilds,...followed by British, French, German, Belgian, and Greek-owned companies. ... In 1901, [Baku] ... was the largest supplier of oil in the world. ...known as the ¨Paris of the Caspian,¨a cosmopolitan European city with a ...business elite, educated bourgeoisie, and ...tree-lined boulevards, monumental public buildings, and ... theaters, museums, academies, newspapers...modern communication networks. ...[Beginning] in 1920, [under Soviet rule] [it] ... became a center for research and engineering related to oil production.¨
¨Baku ... one of the original sites of global economic organization. ...[Since] 1880...linked through... complex... transcontinental infrastructure to markets and financial institutions across the globe. ...its oil industry attracted large-scale foreign investment and worldwide expertise, skills, and ideas.. ....[Oil production] ... a research-based industry that operated within transnational systems of economic and political relations. ...systems intersected with local structures and practices to generate a dynamic industrial culture and urban environment...unique among early oil extraction sites.¨
¨...oil and urbanism...intertwined ...since petroleum replaced coal as the source of energy to power machinery by means of the internal combustion engine.΅
¨...oil money built ... Rockefeller Center; changed the profile of Manhattan, and added museums, cultural institutions, and parks to New York City.¨
¨...oil curse...the negative economic and political consequences of oil wealth resulting from short sighted economic policies that massively shift production inputs to the mineral and non-tradable sectors...undermining ...manufacturing and agricultural sectors of ...economies. ....consequences of over dependence on revenue from oil and ...rent of mineral resources to external clients--the curse of oil wealth--...poor economic performance, unbalanced growth, impoverished populations, weak state institutions, ...a high incidence of authoritarian regimes in resource-rich nations, particularly in ... post-socialist and developing world.¨
¨The shipping routes...[transnational distribution] networks [spanning continents and oceans] followed ...more flexible--and ...less vulnerable to sabotage by workers-- than the fixed channels of landlocked railway lines.¨
¨...political agency remained firmly...in the hands of the large oil companies and the nation states that ...provided them with military protection and financial support.¨
¨Baku ...the site of a series of strikes that set off the first general strike in Russia in 1903 and culminated in the revolution of 1905.¨
¨...the oil industry and urban planning [both] came into being ...in the last decades of the nineteenth century. ...products of the Second (scientific-technological) Industrial Revolution...ushered in a new phase of modern industrialization and capitalist development in northern Europe and the United States.¨
¨...Berlin...succeeded New York as the electrical-engineering capital of the world in the 1890s and early 1900s....¨
¨...new [city] planning ideas and tools developed in Europe reached Baku in the same years that industrialization was transforming the city´s oil business.¨
¨[From] ...the seventeenth century, Baku...part of the pilgrimage route from India to the Zoroastrian Fire Temple in Surakhani ...within the municipal boundaries of Greater Baku. The temple itself marked the original site of Zoroastrianism and fire worship on the Absheron Peninsula, where vast reserves of oil and natural gas ...so close to the surface that pools of oil and escaping gas often ignited spontaneously. ...from the beginning of the nineteenth century, the Citadel of Baku...a fortified Russian garrison on the defense line of the military frontier of the Russian Empire; a borderland post between the Russian, Persian, and Ottoman empires, ...at the crossroads of vast transcontinental communication and transportation networks. [When Russia conquered] ... the territory in the early nineteenth century, Baku came under European rule....¨
¨...the modern urbanization of Baku [began with] ... the oil boom that followed from the industrialization of oil extraction and processing in the last quarter of the nineteenth century.¨
¨...vast oil and natural gas reserves on the Absheron Peninsula...tapped for centuries before that time. But the methods of extraction... primitive and inefficient.¨
¨ The refining industry developed before drilling... ...first factory for processing lamp oil...built in 1859... ...kerosene... used...for illumination in oil lamps...also as a lubricant for machinery.¨
¨...principal market for Baku´s kerosene was St. Petersburg, ...there were fewer than six hours of daylight in winter. ...quality ....low...compared to...Standard OIl...Pennsylvania...Baku´s principal competitor in St. Petersburg. Pennsylvania´s oil ...lighter and ideally suited to kerosene distillation...¨
¨Baku´s disadvantage ...compounded...both the Caspian Sea and Volga River...frozen solid from October through...March...closed to shipping for...six winter months of every year when demand was highest in St. Petersburg, while the US oil producers could ship year round directly to St. Petersburg via the Baltic Sea.¨
¨Large-scale ...extraction in Baku...began in the mid-1870s...triggered...by government concern about the un-competitiveness of the Russian oil industry...led to a reexamination of ... tsarist policies... ...A government-sponsored report in 1871 recommended that...the state needed to follow the US example by opening the oil business to free enterprise and competition.¨
¨The tsarist state [removed] ...the kerosene excise tax in 1877...development and regulation of the oil industry entirely [left] to private enterprise.¨
¨...Baku oil industry..a haven for speculators, wildcatters, and fortune seekers...many...makeshift operations did not last long.¨
¨...in the early 1870s...the arrival of the Swedish-Russian arms manufacturers, Robert and Ludwig Nobel (brothers of the inventor of dynamite, Alfred Nobel) ... revolutionized the oil industry in Baku. [The family] patriarch, Immanuel Nobel (1801-72; an architect by training) ...moved his engineering business to St. Petersburg [in 1838] ...built a factory to produce artillery shells, mortars, and underwater mines (the most important of his many inventions) ...[and] mechanical equipment for the Russian Navy.¨
¨...Nobels...refining and then extracting oil on a large scale in the mid-1870s.... Within twenty-five years (1877-1901)...drilled more than 500 wells, produced 150 million barrels of petroleum, and had 12,000 workers in their employ. ...transformed the Baku oil industry...¨
¨[The Nobels] ...laid the first pipeline system in Russia in 1877 (powered by a ...steam pump)...to transport crude oil from the fields in Balakhani to the refineries and shipping piers on the shores of the Caspian Sea... ...Nobels...chemists and engineers. ...familiar with ...advanced practices in the American oil business...had traveled to Pennsylvania to study the new steam-engine-powered drilling methods developed by the Standard Oil Company......Nobels...innovative on...number of fronts.... the first...to have a full-time petroleum geologist on staff.¨
¨...improved ...rate and quality of oil production...inducing new extracion, refining and distribution technology: Pumping stations, pipelines, and storage for oil...railway networks ...linked oil depots throughout Russia.... designed and manufactured railway tank cars (adapting the American prototype ...to Russian gauge in 1881)...in 1877 ...built the first successful ocean-going oil tanker in the world. ...Zoroaster...equipped with twenty-one watertight vertical tanks.. could hold a ...cargo of around 250 tons ...had a draft of no more than 2.75 meters....allowed it to pass through the shallow canals linking the Volga and Neva rivers...possible for Baku oil to travel by water as well as rail to St. Petersburg.¨
¨...the tankers were named after foundational figures, sects, and texts of an eclectic group of systems of thought, including Buddha, Nordenskjold, Moses, Mohammed, Tartarin, Brahma, Spinoza, Socrates, Darwin, Koran, Talmud, and Kalmuk.¨
¨...brothers ...constantly developing new techniques for processing the oil...for reducing pollution using chemical purifiers to improve the color and flashpoint of kerosene...exploring new uses for petroleum by-products and the waste products of kerosene production including ...manufacture of highly profitable lubricants and rubber.¨
¨...also innovative...management...profit-sharing plan...providing housing and free education to workers. ...established technical schools...built a company town called Villa Petrolea for engineers and ...upper-level employees, with apartment and houses, landscaped gardens, schools, libraries, meeting rooms... no secret of either ...technological inventions or ...innovative practices...rapidly adopted and emulated by ...other large oil companies in Baku. ...Ludwig Nobel ...alone among ...foreign oil magnates in late-nineteenth-century Baku to give back... he built a large park equipped with a range of public entertainments...dedicated it to the city's inhabitants.. Otherwise...charitable activities...directed toward...own employees´ living and working conditions.¨
¨Villa Petrolea...superior accommodation (bungalows and apartments set in a landscaped park) ...also extensive technical and cultural infrastructure for the managers and their families, including schools, a library, billiards and meeting rooms, and the first telephone in Baku, with lines to...oil fields and harbor.¨
¨...Noels...two possible strategies for minimizing...risk entailed in...oil business. ...vertical integration...became the industry model. Nobels´ operation encompassed every stage of the production and marketing of oil and its by-products: ...drilling...extraction...delivery of crude oil to refineries...transformation into consumer products and ...distribution to wholesalers.¨
¨...the construction of the Transcaucasian Railway ...[was] financed by the Rothschild banking family. [It] ... connected Baku with the tree-trade harbor of Batumi on the Black Sea. Rothschild Brothers Bank in Paris...owned a major refinery in Fiume...and was interested in acquiring Russian crude oil for it. The ...line was of major significance for the development of the oil industry in Baku. ... In the winter ...the Volga was frozen, [and] Baku was practically cut off from teh European system of communication.¨
¨...the Nobels´ second strategy for minimizing risk...was to foster cooperation among producers by forming cartels.¨
¨...Baku's oil industrialists [organized] ...collectively ...to keep refining in Baku and...compete ...with Baku´s principal international competitor, Standard Oil, for dominance in Russian and European kerosene markets.¨
¨[Russian chemist Dmitry] Medeleyev...had attended the Centennial International Exposition in Philadelphia in 1876 and toured the Pennsylvania oil fields, was instrumental in introducing American distilling technology...into kerosene production in Baku.¨
¨...the Nobels ... [turned] Baku into an ¨experimental laboratory of the world industry¨ by conducting...research into the conversion of coal-powered steam engines into oil-powered steam engines, and sharing the results among the oil engineers working in Baku.¨
¨[As a result] ...the Russian Caspian fleet and the Transcaucasian railway [converted] ... from coal to fuel oil in the late 1870s and early 1880s. By 1893 the Russian national railway...and Imperial Navy had switched from coal to fuel oil.¨
¨...until World War I, the oil-burning locomotives and steam engines of the Russian fleet and railways...flexible hybrids that could be ¨changed at a moment's notice¨ from oil-burning back to coal burning.¨
¨In ...1898-1901 Baku produced more oil than the United States. By the beginning of the [20th] ...century ... the world's energy capital.¨
¨...the Black Town [planned in 1876]...the first instance of zoning ... in the history of Russian city planning, as well as the first example of a planned industrial zone.¨
¨The urban grid...establishes relationships of equivalence and interconnection among its parts...also subordinates them to the whole.¨
¨[As the Black Town grid filled up] ...the Nobel complex and ...businesses...moved to ... area [on the eastern edge of the Black Town and]...allowed the spatial logic of oil production...to determine the urban layout of the White Town.¨
¨...historians ...of the oil industry have identified the proliferation of small independent companies and operations in a relatively confined space as one of the most important channels of entrepreneurship, learning, and change.¨
¨[Haji Zeynalabdin Taghiyev (1823?-1924), one of the wealthiest and the most philanthropic of the oil barons]...also famous for importing the first automobile to Azerbaijan.¨
The book contains a lot of very interesting information that was new to me at least, as well as tons of fascinating photographs of the changing face of Baku over the past 100 plus years. I really had no idea that Baku was the center of oil production world wide at one point and still produces oil and gas even today. The Soviet Union expanded oil production to other parts of Russia eventually - especially during World War II: To deny Hitler access to Baku´s oil - although Hitler never got to Baku - much of the oil industry of Baku was dismantled and transferred in a thousand boats across the Caspian Sea to Kazakhstan, and the existing oil wells of Baku were sealed with concrete at Stalin's direction. An action that more or less destroyed the wells since it was so difficult to re-activate them afterwards. But by then, oil exploration along the Volga River and in W. Siberia was underway - with many new oil fields producing oil and gas. Baku never again regained its previous oil primacy but it did continue as a center of oil-related machinery manufacturing and oil technology research and innovation. As stated above, this innovation eventually petered out such that technology was woefully out of date and the city quite poor by the time the Soviet Union collapsed. Its fortunes have now revived with the partnerships with foreign oil companies such as Exxon, BP Royal Dutch Shell and so forth - which have built deep sea oil extraction platforms in the Caspian Sea. Meanwhile, pipelines now connect oil producing areas in Baku/Absheron Peninsula and Russia to markets in Europe as well as ports in the Russian Far East, so that oil from Baku and Russia can be exported everywhere via pipeline and ship. The question for all the oil-producing countries is planning for a future without oil - how can they still benefit in the fast-approaching new environment?
I would recommend this book to anyone who wishes to find out about the history of the city of Baku. The reader will learn quite a bit about this very interesting metropolis and along with the commentary about urbanism, will find out about the oil history of Baku and oil history in general, which is also interesting - especially in light of today's critical energy debates. The book contains numerous interesting maps and charts - so information is conveyed in a number of different ways, via historic photos, urban planning maps, aerial photos, photos of architectural models of buildings and the city itself, and so forth. It seems that as long as oil revenue continues to pour into Azerbaijan, it will have the money to continue with its current rather grandiose modernization scheme for Baku.
Here are the quotes:
¨By 1900...the oil business...was modernized by European producers and investors...the Russian branch of the Nobel family...the French Rothschilds,...followed by British, French, German, Belgian, and Greek-owned companies. ... In 1901, [Baku] ... was the largest supplier of oil in the world. ...known as the ¨Paris of the Caspian,¨a cosmopolitan European city with a ...business elite, educated bourgeoisie, and ...tree-lined boulevards, monumental public buildings, and ... theaters, museums, academies, newspapers...modern communication networks. ...[Beginning] in 1920, [under Soviet rule] [it] ... became a center for research and engineering related to oil production.¨
¨Baku ... one of the original sites of global economic organization. ...[Since] 1880...linked through... complex... transcontinental infrastructure to markets and financial institutions across the globe. ...its oil industry attracted large-scale foreign investment and worldwide expertise, skills, and ideas.. ....[Oil production] ... a research-based industry that operated within transnational systems of economic and political relations. ...systems intersected with local structures and practices to generate a dynamic industrial culture and urban environment...unique among early oil extraction sites.¨
¨...oil and urbanism...intertwined ...since petroleum replaced coal as the source of energy to power machinery by means of the internal combustion engine.΅
¨...oil money built ... Rockefeller Center; changed the profile of Manhattan, and added museums, cultural institutions, and parks to New York City.¨
¨...oil curse...the negative economic and political consequences of oil wealth resulting from short sighted economic policies that massively shift production inputs to the mineral and non-tradable sectors...undermining ...manufacturing and agricultural sectors of ...economies. ....consequences of over dependence on revenue from oil and ...rent of mineral resources to external clients--the curse of oil wealth--...poor economic performance, unbalanced growth, impoverished populations, weak state institutions, ...a high incidence of authoritarian regimes in resource-rich nations, particularly in ... post-socialist and developing world.¨
¨The shipping routes...[transnational distribution] networks [spanning continents and oceans] followed ...more flexible--and ...less vulnerable to sabotage by workers-- than the fixed channels of landlocked railway lines.¨
¨...political agency remained firmly...in the hands of the large oil companies and the nation states that ...provided them with military protection and financial support.¨
¨Baku ...the site of a series of strikes that set off the first general strike in Russia in 1903 and culminated in the revolution of 1905.¨
¨...the oil industry and urban planning [both] came into being ...in the last decades of the nineteenth century. ...products of the Second (scientific-technological) Industrial Revolution...ushered in a new phase of modern industrialization and capitalist development in northern Europe and the United States.¨
¨...Berlin...succeeded New York as the electrical-engineering capital of the world in the 1890s and early 1900s....¨
¨...new [city] planning ideas and tools developed in Europe reached Baku in the same years that industrialization was transforming the city´s oil business.¨
¨[From] ...the seventeenth century, Baku...part of the pilgrimage route from India to the Zoroastrian Fire Temple in Surakhani ...within the municipal boundaries of Greater Baku. The temple itself marked the original site of Zoroastrianism and fire worship on the Absheron Peninsula, where vast reserves of oil and natural gas ...so close to the surface that pools of oil and escaping gas often ignited spontaneously. ...from the beginning of the nineteenth century, the Citadel of Baku...a fortified Russian garrison on the defense line of the military frontier of the Russian Empire; a borderland post between the Russian, Persian, and Ottoman empires, ...at the crossroads of vast transcontinental communication and transportation networks. [When Russia conquered] ... the territory in the early nineteenth century, Baku came under European rule....¨
¨...the modern urbanization of Baku [began with] ... the oil boom that followed from the industrialization of oil extraction and processing in the last quarter of the nineteenth century.¨
¨...vast oil and natural gas reserves on the Absheron Peninsula...tapped for centuries before that time. But the methods of extraction... primitive and inefficient.¨
¨ The refining industry developed before drilling... ...first factory for processing lamp oil...built in 1859... ...kerosene... used...for illumination in oil lamps...also as a lubricant for machinery.¨
¨...principal market for Baku´s kerosene was St. Petersburg, ...there were fewer than six hours of daylight in winter. ...quality ....low...compared to...Standard OIl...Pennsylvania...Baku´s principal competitor in St. Petersburg. Pennsylvania´s oil ...lighter and ideally suited to kerosene distillation...¨
¨Baku´s disadvantage ...compounded...both the Caspian Sea and Volga River...frozen solid from October through...March...closed to shipping for...six winter months of every year when demand was highest in St. Petersburg, while the US oil producers could ship year round directly to St. Petersburg via the Baltic Sea.¨
¨Large-scale ...extraction in Baku...began in the mid-1870s...triggered...by government concern about the un-competitiveness of the Russian oil industry...led to a reexamination of ... tsarist policies... ...A government-sponsored report in 1871 recommended that...the state needed to follow the US example by opening the oil business to free enterprise and competition.¨
¨The tsarist state [removed] ...the kerosene excise tax in 1877...development and regulation of the oil industry entirely [left] to private enterprise.¨
¨...Baku oil industry..a haven for speculators, wildcatters, and fortune seekers...many...makeshift operations did not last long.¨
¨...in the early 1870s...the arrival of the Swedish-Russian arms manufacturers, Robert and Ludwig Nobel (brothers of the inventor of dynamite, Alfred Nobel) ... revolutionized the oil industry in Baku. [The family] patriarch, Immanuel Nobel (1801-72; an architect by training) ...moved his engineering business to St. Petersburg [in 1838] ...built a factory to produce artillery shells, mortars, and underwater mines (the most important of his many inventions) ...[and] mechanical equipment for the Russian Navy.¨
¨...Nobels...refining and then extracting oil on a large scale in the mid-1870s.... Within twenty-five years (1877-1901)...drilled more than 500 wells, produced 150 million barrels of petroleum, and had 12,000 workers in their employ. ...transformed the Baku oil industry...¨
¨[The Nobels] ...laid the first pipeline system in Russia in 1877 (powered by a ...steam pump)...to transport crude oil from the fields in Balakhani to the refineries and shipping piers on the shores of the Caspian Sea... ...Nobels...chemists and engineers. ...familiar with ...advanced practices in the American oil business...had traveled to Pennsylvania to study the new steam-engine-powered drilling methods developed by the Standard Oil Company......Nobels...innovative on...number of fronts.... the first...to have a full-time petroleum geologist on staff.¨
¨...improved ...rate and quality of oil production...inducing new extracion, refining and distribution technology: Pumping stations, pipelines, and storage for oil...railway networks ...linked oil depots throughout Russia.... designed and manufactured railway tank cars (adapting the American prototype ...to Russian gauge in 1881)...in 1877 ...built the first successful ocean-going oil tanker in the world. ...Zoroaster...equipped with twenty-one watertight vertical tanks.. could hold a ...cargo of around 250 tons ...had a draft of no more than 2.75 meters....allowed it to pass through the shallow canals linking the Volga and Neva rivers...possible for Baku oil to travel by water as well as rail to St. Petersburg.¨
¨...the tankers were named after foundational figures, sects, and texts of an eclectic group of systems of thought, including Buddha, Nordenskjold, Moses, Mohammed, Tartarin, Brahma, Spinoza, Socrates, Darwin, Koran, Talmud, and Kalmuk.¨
¨...brothers ...constantly developing new techniques for processing the oil...for reducing pollution using chemical purifiers to improve the color and flashpoint of kerosene...exploring new uses for petroleum by-products and the waste products of kerosene production including ...manufacture of highly profitable lubricants and rubber.¨
¨...also innovative...management...profit-sharing plan...providing housing and free education to workers. ...established technical schools...built a company town called Villa Petrolea for engineers and ...upper-level employees, with apartment and houses, landscaped gardens, schools, libraries, meeting rooms... no secret of either ...technological inventions or ...innovative practices...rapidly adopted and emulated by ...other large oil companies in Baku. ...Ludwig Nobel ...alone among ...foreign oil magnates in late-nineteenth-century Baku to give back... he built a large park equipped with a range of public entertainments...dedicated it to the city's inhabitants.. Otherwise...charitable activities...directed toward...own employees´ living and working conditions.¨
¨Villa Petrolea...superior accommodation (bungalows and apartments set in a landscaped park) ...also extensive technical and cultural infrastructure for the managers and their families, including schools, a library, billiards and meeting rooms, and the first telephone in Baku, with lines to...oil fields and harbor.¨
¨...Noels...two possible strategies for minimizing...risk entailed in...oil business. ...vertical integration...became the industry model. Nobels´ operation encompassed every stage of the production and marketing of oil and its by-products: ...drilling...extraction...delivery of crude oil to refineries...transformation into consumer products and ...distribution to wholesalers.¨
¨...the construction of the Transcaucasian Railway ...[was] financed by the Rothschild banking family. [It] ... connected Baku with the tree-trade harbor of Batumi on the Black Sea. Rothschild Brothers Bank in Paris...owned a major refinery in Fiume...and was interested in acquiring Russian crude oil for it. The ...line was of major significance for the development of the oil industry in Baku. ... In the winter ...the Volga was frozen, [and] Baku was practically cut off from teh European system of communication.¨
¨...the Nobels´ second strategy for minimizing risk...was to foster cooperation among producers by forming cartels.¨
¨...Baku's oil industrialists [organized] ...collectively ...to keep refining in Baku and...compete ...with Baku´s principal international competitor, Standard Oil, for dominance in Russian and European kerosene markets.¨
¨[Russian chemist Dmitry] Medeleyev...had attended the Centennial International Exposition in Philadelphia in 1876 and toured the Pennsylvania oil fields, was instrumental in introducing American distilling technology...into kerosene production in Baku.¨
¨...the Nobels ... [turned] Baku into an ¨experimental laboratory of the world industry¨ by conducting...research into the conversion of coal-powered steam engines into oil-powered steam engines, and sharing the results among the oil engineers working in Baku.¨
¨[As a result] ...the Russian Caspian fleet and the Transcaucasian railway [converted] ... from coal to fuel oil in the late 1870s and early 1880s. By 1893 the Russian national railway...and Imperial Navy had switched from coal to fuel oil.¨
¨...until World War I, the oil-burning locomotives and steam engines of the Russian fleet and railways...flexible hybrids that could be ¨changed at a moment's notice¨ from oil-burning back to coal burning.¨
¨In ...1898-1901 Baku produced more oil than the United States. By the beginning of the [20th] ...century ... the world's energy capital.¨
¨...the Black Town [planned in 1876]...the first instance of zoning ... in the history of Russian city planning, as well as the first example of a planned industrial zone.¨
¨The urban grid...establishes relationships of equivalence and interconnection among its parts...also subordinates them to the whole.¨
¨[As the Black Town grid filled up] ...the Nobel complex and ...businesses...moved to ... area [on the eastern edge of the Black Town and]...allowed the spatial logic of oil production...to determine the urban layout of the White Town.¨
¨...historians ...of the oil industry have identified the proliferation of small independent companies and operations in a relatively confined space as one of the most important channels of entrepreneurship, learning, and change.¨
¨[Haji Zeynalabdin Taghiyev (1823?-1924), one of the wealthiest and the most philanthropic of the oil barons]...also famous for importing the first automobile to Azerbaijan.¨
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