Neft Daşları ( ) is an industrial settlement in

Baku Baku (, ; ) is the Capital city, capital and List of cities in Azerbaijan, largest city of Azerbaijan, as well as the largest city on the Caspian Sea and in the Caucasus region. Baku is below sea level, which makes it the List of capital ci ...

Azerbaijan Azerbaijan, officially the Republic of Azerbaijan, is a Boundaries between the continents, transcontinental and landlocked country at the boundary of West Asia and Eastern Europe. It is a part of the South Caucasus region and is bounded by ...

. The settlement forms part of the municipality of

Çilov-Neft Daşları Çilov-Neft Daşları (also, Cilov-Neft Daşları) is a municipality in the Pirallahy raion of Baku, Azerbaijan Azerbaijan, officially the Republic of Azerbaijan, is a Boundaries between the continents, transcontinental and landlocked cou ...

in the Pirallahy raion. It lies away from the Azerbaijani capital

, and from the nearest mainland shore in the

Caspian Sea The Caspian Sea is the world's largest inland body of water, described as the List of lakes by area, world's largest lake and usually referred to as a full-fledged sea. An endorheic basin, it lies between Europe and Asia: east of the Caucasus, ...

. A full town on the sea, it was the first

oil platform An oil platform (also called an oil rig, offshore platform, oil production platform, etc.) is a large structure with facilities to extract and process petroleum and natural gas that lie in rock formations beneath the seabed. Many oil platforms w ...

, and the first operating offshore oil platform in the world, incorporating numerous

drilling platform A drilling rig is an integrated system that drills wells, such as oil or water wells, or holes for piling and other construction purposes, into the earth's subsurface. Drilling rigs can be massive structures housing equipment used to drill w ...

s. It is featured in ''

Guinness World Records ''Guinness World Records'', known from its inception in 1955 until 1999 as ''The Guinness Book of Records'' and in previous United States editions as ''The Guinness Book of World Records'', is a British reference book published annually, list ...

'' as the world's first offshore oil platform. The settlement began with a single path out over the water and grew into a system of paths and platforms built on the back of ships sunk to serve as the Neft Daşları's foundation. The most distinctive feature of Neft Daşları is that it is actually a functional city with a population of about 2,000 and once comprised over of streets built on piles of

landfill A landfill is a site for the disposal of waste materials. It is the oldest and most common form of waste disposal, although the systematic burial of waste with daily, intermediate and final covers only began in the 1940s. In the past, waste was ...

Etymology

The settlement was originally named as ''Chornye Kamni'' (Russian for "Black Rocks"), but was later renamed to ''Neftyanye Kamni'' (Russian "Petroleum Rocks"), in Azerbaijani nowadays ''Neft Daşları'' (id.), replacing the allusion to the black colour of oil with a reference to the substance itself.

History

Construction of the settlement

The first large-scale geological study of the area was conducted in 1945–1948. The settlement of Neft Daşları was built after oil was discovered there on 7 November 1949 at beneath the

. It became the world's first offshore

. By 1951, the Neft Daşları was ready for production, equipped with all of the infrastructure needed at the time. Drilling platforms were erected, oil tanks installed, and docks with enclosures for ships were built. The first oil from the Neft Daşları was loaded into a tanker in the same year. In 1952, the systematic construction of

trestle bridge A trestle bridge is a bridge composed of a number of short spans supported by closely spaced frames usually carrying a railroad line. A trestle (sometimes tressel) is a rigid frame used as a support, historically a tripod used to support a st ...

s connecting the artificial islands was begun. A number of Soviet factories constructed crane assemblies especially for use on the Neft Daşları, along with a crane barge that could carry up to 100 tons of oil. The assemblies were equipped with diesel hammers used to drive piles into the sea floor. Large-scale construction started on the settlement in 1958, which included nine-story hostels, hotels, cultural palaces, bakery factories and lemonade workshops. The mass development of Neft Daşları continued during 1976–1978 with the building of a five-story dormitory and two oil-gas compressor stations, the installation of a drinking water facility, and the construction of two underwater pipelines to the Dubendi terminal, each with a diameter of . In addition, a flyover for vehicular traffic was created. As a result, the area of the settlement grew to around in the 1960s, with the length of the steel trestle bridges joining the man-made islands exceeding , although much has since fallen into the Caspian sea.

Post-independence

In November 2009, the settlement celebrated its 60th anniversary. Over the last 60 years, the oilfields of Neft Daşları have produced more than 170 million tons of oil and 15 billion cubic metres of associated natural gas. According to present-day estimates by geologists, the volume of recoverable reserves is as high as 30 million tons. The oil platforms have gradually fallen into disrepair, and no refurbishment plans are currently underway.

Demography

The population varies from time to time in the settlement. As of 2008, the platforms have a combined population of about 2,000 men and women, who work in week-long offshore shifts. At one point 5,000 people worked there.

Oil extraction

The

oil extraction Petroleum is a fossil fuel that can be drawn from beneath the Earth's surface. Reservoirs of petroleum are formed through the mixture of plants, algae, and sediments in shallow seas under high pressure. Petroleum is mostly recovered from oil ...

is carried out from the shallow water portion of the Absheron geological trend.

Accidents

On 4 December 2015, three workers of

SOCAR The State Oil Company of the Republic of Azerbaijan (), largely known by its abbreviation SOCAR, is a fully state-owned national oil and gas company headquartered in Baku, Azerbaijan. The company produces oil and natural gas from onshore and o ...

were reported missing after part of the living quarters fell into the sea due to a heavy storm.

In popular culture

* In 2008, a Swiss documentary crew led by film director Marc Wolfensberger filmed "La Cité du Pétrole / Oil Rocks – City above the Sea" in the settlement, which was released in 2009
Vimeo
* Neft Daşları is featured in a scene in the

James Bond The ''James Bond'' franchise focuses on James Bond (literary character), the titular character, a fictional Secret Intelligence Service, British Secret Service agent created in 1953 by writer Ian Fleming, who featured him in twelve novels ...

film ''

The World Is Not Enough ''The World Is Not Enough'' is a 1999 spy film, the nineteenth in the List of James Bond films, ''James Bond'' series produced by Eon Productions and the third to star Pierce Brosnan as the fictional Secret Intelligence Service, MI6 agent Jam ...

'' (1999). * Neft Daşları is on the list in the Guinness Book as the oldest offshore oil platform.

References

External links

Map of the area

Photos of Oil Rocks taken in 2013

English Russia: Oil Stones, A Soviet City in the Middle of the SeaLink to the film trailer Oil Rocks – City above the Sea
*