SOMETHING LIKE A WELL.

215

CHAPTER XIV.

THE OIL FOUNTAINS OF BAKU.

Number of Wells in Baku and America Compared-One Baku Well Yielding More than all the American Wells Put Together-A Million's worth of Oil from a Single Well-Description of a Baku Petroleum Fountain-The Droojba Spouting Well-Mode of Boring for Oil. The Balakhani Drilled and Pumping Wells-Cost of Sinking a Well-Price of Land at the Oil Fields-The Kalpak, or Well-stopper-Storing the Oil-The History of the Oil Fountains during the last Ten Years-Subterranean Explosions-Six Hundred Gallons of Oil in Twenty-Four Hours-Enormous Waste of Petroleum-The Fire at Krasilnikoff's Wells-A Sand Volcano 400 Feet High-Account of the Droojba FountainA Liquid Grindstone-Gagging the Wells at Baku-Statistical Account of the Oil Wasted by the Droojba Fountain-Science and the Oil Fountains at BakuTheir Effect on Commercial Men-Necessity of Placing the Fountains Under the Control of the State.

IN America there are over 25,000 drilled petroleum wells. Baku possesses 400. But a single one of those 400 wells has thrown up as much oil in a day as nearly the whole of the 25,000 in America put together. This is very wonderful, but a more striking fact is, that the copiousness of the well should have ruined its owners, and broken the heart of the engineer who bored it, after having yielded enough oil in four months to have realised in America at least one million sterling.

"In Pennsylvania that fountain would have made its owner's fortune; there's £5,000 worth of oil flowing out of the well every day.* Here it has made the owner a bankrupt." These words were addressed to

*This was a rough guess. The actual value was over £11,000. The quantity then flowing was 400,000 or 500,000 poods a day, which, at 28 copecks a pood, the quotation price in Pennsylvania at the moment, would have realised from 112,000 to 140,000 roubles, or at the least £11,200 a day.

me by an American petroleum engineer, as I stood alongside a well that had burst the previous morning, and out of which the oil was flying twice the height of the Great Geyser in Iceland, with a roar that could be heard several miles round. The fountain was a splendid spectacle-it was the largest ever known at Baku. When the first outburst took place the oil had knocked off the roof and part of the sides of the derrick, but there was a beam left at the top, against which the oil broke with a roar in its upward course, and which served in a measure to check its velocity. The derrick itself was 70 feet high, and the oil and the sand, after bursting through the roof and sides, flowed fully three times higher, forming a greyish-black fountain, the column clearly defined on the southern side, but merging into a cloud of spray thirty yards broad on the other. A strong southerly wind enabled us to approach within a few yards of the crater on the former side, and to look down into the sandy basin formed round about the bottom of the derrick, where the oil was bubbling and seething round the stalk of the oil-shoot like a geyser. The diameter of the tube up which the oil was rushing was 10 inches. On issuing from this the fountain formed a clearly-defined stem about 18 inches thick, and shot up to the top of the derrick, where in striking against the beam, which was already worn half through by the friction, it got broadened out a little. Thence continuing its course more than 200 feet high, it curled over and fell in a dense cloud to the ground on the north side, forming a sand bank, over which the olive-coloured oil ran in innumerable channels towards the lakes of petroleum that had been formed on the surrounding estates. Now and again the sand flowing up with the oil would obstruct the pipe, or a stone would clog the course; then the column would sink for a few seconds

OIL SPOUTING THREE HUNDRED FEET HIGH. 217

lower than 200 feet, to rise directly afterwards with a burst and a roar to 300 feet. Throughout the previous day a north wind had been blowing, causing the oil and sand to fall in a contrary direction from that pursued while we were there. Some idea of the mass of matter thrown up from the well could be formed by a glance at the damage done on the south side in 24 hours--a vast shoal of sand having been formed, which had buried to the roof some magazines and shops, and had blocked to the height of six or seven feet all the neighbouring derricks within a distance of 50 yards. Some of the sand and oil had been carried by the wind nearly 100 yards from the fountain-the sand drenched roofs of the adjacent buildings showing how far the cloud of matter had extended. From this outer boundary, where the oil lay an inch or so deep on the ground, the sandshoal rose gradually, until at the rim of the crater it was about 20 feet deep, the surface being hard and soddened, and intersected with small channels, along which the oil was draining off to the lakes. On the opposite side a new shoal was forming, and we could see the sand as it fell drifting round the neighbouring derricks and burying all the outhouses in the way. Here and there gangs of men were at work with wooden spades, digging and clearing channels round about the mouth of the well, to enable the oil to flow away. Their task was no easy or agreeable one. Upon their heads and shoulders oil and sand never ceased to fall, and they had to be careful to avoid being drawn into, and engulphed in the vortex round the base of the crater. Luckily no stones of any size were being thrown up with the oil. Sometimes blocks weighing several pounds are hurled up from the depths below, and then it becomes a dangerous matter to approach a petroleum fountain. Standing on the top of the sand-shoal we could see where the oil,

after flowing through a score of channels from the ooze, formed in the distance on lower ground a whole series of oil lakes, some broad enough and deep enough to row a boat in. Beyond this, the oil could be seen flowing away in a broad channel towards the sea.

It may be asked how a magnificent oil fountain of this description should be able to make its owner a millionaire in one hemisphere and a bankrupt in another. The answer is simple enough. The fountain belonged to a small Armenian Company, the Droojba, having ground enough to establish a well upon, but nothing to spare for reservoirs. Consequently, all the oil was flowing away upon other people's property, and the amount subsequently caught and saved upon the waste lands afar off was being sold at such a low price, as to be altogether inadequate to meet the claims for compensation from those whose houses and shops had been engulphed, and their derricks hindered from working, by the sand thrown up from the well. Had the Droojba possessed plenty of land round about their well to store the oil, they would not have been so badly off, but their well happened to be in the midst of several hundred estates covering the Balakhani plateau, and hence the damage done ruined them.

Boring for petroleum is a simple and interesting process. A wooden derrick, of planks and boards, like a huge sentry-box, is erected over the spot selected for the well. This is about 20 feet square at the base, 60 to 80 feet high, and tapering upwards until the top is only 3 feet square. Here rests a heavy beam, to which the boring apparatus is rigged, much in the American fashion; an iron bit, gouge-shaped, being fitted to a boring bar about 10 feet long, and successively increased by other lengths as the depth of the boring increases. The Armenian companies usually bore by manual or horse

BORING FOR PETROLEUM.

219

power, or use primitive machinery, but Nobel Brothers and other large firms employ engines heated by oil. In general, all the Baku firms model their operations upon those of the Nobels. Every innovation Ludwig Nobel makes is imitated more or less successfully by the Russians and Armenians. The latter make no effort to inaugurate anything fresh themselves, or even to keep themselves acquainted with what is being done in America. Ludwig Nobel, on the other hand, is always improving his mode of operations, either availing himself of his own engineering skill or that of his employés, or introducing fresh ideas from the United States. He is thus the connecting link between Baku and Pennsylvania; between, one might also say, Armenian and Russian backwardness and American progress and enlightenment. Without going into technical particulars, Nobel Brothers' mode of working may be defined as the American system intelligently modified and adapted to the peculiarities of Baku. If the stranger visits Nobels' wells, accompanied by Mr. Sandgren, the very intelligent Swedish manager, and then goes the round of the remainder, he will find that while none come up to theirs in efficiency and simplicity of working, a large number are merely caricatures, or just emerging from the old primitive modes of exploitation. I am not saying this in a carping spirit. I am only stating an actual recognised fact. In justice to them all, I must observe that they display the utmost readiness to show the stranger over the wells, and give him any information he requires. It is only in the kerosine refineries that anxiety is evinced to safeguard technical secrets.

In America the bores often run small, but in Baku the tubes are invariably large-that is to say, from ten to fourteen inches. The thickness of the tubes runs from inch to inch. The 400 pit wells do not