No. 3, 2009

The Tyumen Region produced first Western Siberian oil 50 years ago, in September 1959

On the outskirts of the Western Siberian city of Uray, there is a place of great sentimental value to all of the region's oil workers: the Sukhoy bor (Arid Forest) outdoor memorial complex. Beautiful promenades, lined with portraits of the directors and outstanding workers of Urayneftegaz, LUKOIL-Western Siberia's local production facility, lead to the site's central stele, which symbolizes the discovery of Tyumen's first oil half a century ago.

Seven brave men

At the outset, it seemed that the discovery of the first West Siberian oil was to happen at an entirely different place. Geologists had first descended upon the Middle Ob region on September 13, 1957. On the same day, the 270-strong Novogryaznensk geological survey party, having left the village of Kolpashevo, sailed with its train of barges into Surgut. They had been met there by mining engineer Farman Salmanov, the man in charge of geological survey efforts across a wide front. The first key oil well, however, had yet to be drilled, and a torturous, months-long period of searching for new drilling sites had begun.

At the same time, in accordance with an order from Yury Ervye, local head of the Tyumen Region Main Geological Department, the Khanty-Mansi integrated geological survey party, led by the experienced geologist Zhuk, was organized as part of the department, effective as of January 1, 1958.

The territory around the Mulymya geological structure in the Konda district was designated as one promising area for conducting a geological survey. Mark Binshtok, the Khanty-Mansi expedition's chief geologist, and Valery Sobolevsky, its chief engineer, were placed in immediate charge of all the geological survey work in that area.

In the spring of 1959, a small team led by drillmaster Semyon Urusov (1926-1991) commenced drilling not far from the village of Shaim. Urusov was a native Siberian, born in the village of Gilyovka, Yalutorovsk district, in Ural Region's Tyumen Area. His young manhood had coincided with World War II, and he served bravely in the ranks of the Soviet Army, being awarded a distinguished order and several medals. After the war, he worked as a driller and drillmaster in the Zavodoukov, Pokrov, and Shaim geological expeditions.

Urusov's team consisted of only seven men, and they became genuine heroes of their times. They did what they were supposed to do, carried out their assignment, and believed that success was just around the corner. Four decades later, Ivan Shestakov, one of the members of Urusov's team, recalled: "We unloaded everything from the barges almost right at the site, and immediately set to drilling the well. There were no transport vehicles. We carried what we could a little ways, and that's why we decided to drill right there. We set up the rig and got down to drilling."

The first encouraging results from the exploratory drilling of Well No. 2 came toward the end of September. It was in the most optimistic of tones that the October 4, 1959 issue of Tyumen Pravda reported: "On the 25th of September, near the village of Shaim, an oil-bearing bed was discovered at a depth of 1,405 m in the Mulymya geological structure. According to preliminary data, the daily yield of the pool is upwards of one ton of light crude.... Considering that the village of Shaim is 280 km away from the village of Maly Atlym, where the presence of oil has also been discovered, we can be confident of the great prospects for the first oil-bearing region in Siberia. The area's proximity to the industrial centers of the Urals, and to the railroads, opens up an opportunity for the rapid industrial development of its oil and gas reserves. The Tyumen Region could become a new Soviet Baku in the very near future."

Triumphal Well No. 6

This initial success offered encouragement to those in charge of the local main geological department. An independent Shaim Oil Exploration Expedition, headed by Mikhail Shalavin (1908-1970), was organized within the department at the beginning of 1960. The town of Chantyrya, the populated locality nearest to the railroad station of Sosva, through which the expedition would be provided with material and technical assistance during the winter, was chosen as the expedition's main base.

Meanwhile, Semyon Urusov's drilling team doubled its efforts and continued working. A new discovery at the end of April awaited them, one that would confirm the correctness of the geological survey's course. On April 25, 1960, commercial quantities of oil were recovered from Well No. 7. The daily yield was as high as 12 tons. The first true major success, however, still lay ahead.

Only ten days were left in June when the third well drilled, now designated Well No. 6, produced a mighty gusher after striking oil at a depth of 1,523 m. A radiogram, sent on June 21, 1960, from expedition leader Mikhail Shalavin to Yury Ervye, head of the local geological department, reported: "Well R-6 gushed oil through a 5-inch bore casing with no capped producing strings, through a 4-inch cutoff valve into an earthen sump. The volume of the sump has been determined to be 350-400 m³. After perforation of the well's lower section and the substitution of process water for oil, the well would periodically gush ... with a daily yield of 350-500 tons. It is impossible to determine the exact yield, since the well has had to be capped twice for technical reasons. The sump is now almost completely full of oil; the pressure ... I shall report later. Shalavin."

The Shaim (Tryokhozyornoye) oil field, the first in Western Siberia, was thus opened in the Konda district, Khany-Mansi Area, in the month of the Mulymya River.

Well No. 6 at the Mulymya site is generally accepted as the forerunner of Tyumen's big oil. As early as June 23, 1960, Academician Andrey Trofimuk (1911-1999), Director of the Institute of Geology and Geophysics of the USSR Academy of Sciences' Siberian Branch, offered the following assessment of the Shaim oil field's importance: "This is Siberia's first big oil, and it is of great industrial significance." In an interview for the newspaper Tyumen Pravda, he went on to say: "For a number of years now, our geologists have managed to find oil fields in different regions of the Asian part of the USSR. But only the Tyumen geologists and drillers have produced oil that has indisputable industrial potential. According to the data we have now, I can say that the Konda area will become a major oil-producing region in the near future."

The Shaim springboard

The discovery of Shaim's oil allowed further expansion of oil and gas exploration efforts in the Western Siberian lowland, and across the whole of Siberia. The region embraced big oil. "It was a pretty hot time in Shaim back then," Anatoly Storozhev (1933-2006), chief geologist of the Shaim expedition and a Lenin Prize winner, would later reminisce. "Barges kept arriving with equipment, piping, and all sorts of other gear, and there was no place to unload them - no docks, no piers, nothing! We'd choose a suitable place to moor the barges and bring in the unloading equipment. We'd use a bulldozer to make a road on the spot, dirt would be piled up at the side of the barge, and we'd bring in the tractors and cranes and start unloading everything right onto the ground...."

Semyon Urusov's team went on to drill other wells in the Shaim district, setting the USSR record for speed in exploratory drilling almost every year throughout the 1960s. They were declared the USSR Ministry of Geology's best drilling team, and drillmaster Urusov was awarded the title of Hero of Socialist Labor in April 1963.

In its own way, the example of the Shaim gusher was a catalyst for the remarkable events that were to follow in Western Siberia. In 1961, new oil fields were discovered in Ust-Balyk and Megion. If the Shaim district is close to the Urals, the Megion and Ust-Balyk oil fields lie right in the heart of Western Siberia. The new oil fields' reserves were considerably greater than those of the Shaim's, and geologists began paying more attention to the Middle Ob region as a more promising area.

The Shaim oil field, however, was half the distance to Tyumen, a large railroad station, and that allowed fields to be put into production quickly. There was therefore no slackening in the tempo of efforts in Siberia's first oil-bearing region. The Shaim expedition became the largest of its kind not just in the Tyumen Region, but in the entire Soviet Union. In 1961, its base was moved to the village of Uray.

In December 1963, Siberia's first oil-producing region emerged successfully from the approbation of reserves conducted by the State Committee for Mineral Resources. The regional authorities proposed launching pilot field development as early as 1964, using the oil wells drilled by their geologists, while river tankers would deliver the oil produced to the Omsk Refinery.

This would lay the groundwork for the adoption of a comprehensive government order for initiating the industrial production of oil. On December 4, 1963, the USSR Council of Ministers issued the resolution on Organizing Preliminary Efforts for the Industrial Development of Discovered Oil and Gas Fields and the Further Development of Geological Survey Work in the Tyumen Region.

Responsibility for directing the efforts was placed on the Tyumenneftegaz Association, set up in December 1963 and headed by Aron Slepyan (1913-1986), who, until his relocation to Tyumen, had served as the director of the Tuimazaburneft Trust in Bashkiria. There was virtually no oil-producing facilities in the Tyumen area before Slepyan's arrival. We can get some idea of the Tyumenneftegaz Association's infrastructure in the spring of 1964 by realizing that the workers had two drilling rigs, two steamboats, two barges, one automobile, one bulldozer, and one excavator at their disposal.

Industrial oil production at the Shaim oil field began on May 23, 1964. Tanker No. 652 was loaded with oil at 12:00 noon, and soon embarked on the first riverine delivery of oil in Siberia's history. Despite all of the obstacles and some pessimistic forecasts, the production of oil in the Western Siberian oil fields gathered pace, exceeding the designated targets by 200-300%. In 1964, instead of planned 100,000 tons of crude, the region produced 209,000 tons.

Fifty years ago, Shaim's first oil well provided a mighty impetus for the development of Western Siberia's oil industry, lighting a bright and lucky star over the region.