The Russian State Archive of Ancient Acts in Moscow holds a document titled “Extract” that recounts the story of the first Russian oil enterprise belonging to Arkhangelsk resident Fëdor Pryadunov. Here are just a few lines: “In 1745, on the 18th day of November, by decision of the Mining Board, and by the report of the former Arkhangelsk Mining Office at the request of Arkhangelsk resident Fëdor Pryadunov, it was ordered that an oil works be started at an empty site on the small Ukhta River in Pustoye Ozero District in Arkhangelsk Province, and further that the plant be maintained with voluntary capital without stopping, and said oil be sold.”
A detailed description of this field is given in K. Molchanov’s book, Description of Arkhangelsk Province, Its Cities, Monasteries, and Other Noteworthy Sites [Opisaniye Arkhangelskoy gubernii, yeya gorodov, monastyrey i drugikh dostoprimechatelnykh mest] (1813): “In the neighborhood of Izhmyn, on the Ukhta River, there was an oil works, which consisted of the following structure: above the actual oil spring flowing in the middle was built a four-cornered frame 13 rows high, of which six rested on the bottom, and the rest on the ground surface. Inside the frame was a narrow-bottomed tub, which admitted the petroleum flowing out of the water through a hole in the bottom, protected from the fast-flowing water by a cutwater placed on one side.” It is clear from this description that the author is speaking of a structure for gathering petroleum from the water’s surface.
Other archival documents speak of how oil production on the Ukhta was begun in August 1746 by Pryadunov and his employees.
Another unique document on Ukhta petroleum has survived as well. This is a certificate dated May 6, 1747, written by two German researchers, D. M. Miller and M. D. Lossau. The document is an attachment to Fëdor Pryadunov’s February Report No. 524 of 1749, wherein he states that “I took ordinary and distilled oil and sent it to Hamburg.”
The Hamburg scientists diligently investigated the Ukhta oil, comparing it to Italian oil, and concluded that it could be used “in cold phlegms, in dislocations, in colds, in shivers, in enfeeblements, and in joint fractures, as rock oil will provide good external care.”
The archival “File on Fëdor Pryadunov’s Oil Works” contains information to the effect that Mining Lt. Christian Lehmann performed the first distillation of oil brought by Pryadunov to the Mining Board’s laboratory in Moscow on October 10, 1748: “Of which three pounds were taken for rectification, which yielded two pounds of rectified pure oil.” It is also specified that Fëdor Pryadunov had begun independent studies in that laboratory: “On October 19 of the same year, Pryadunov verbally informed the Mining Board that 40 poods [4.8 barrels] of Russian oil said to have been extracted by him, Pryadunov, by the first of May 1746 and 1747 in Pustoye Ozero District on Ukhta Creek, had been delivered to the laboratory of the Mining Board in Moscow, all of which Pryadunov was said to have rectified. And rectification yielded two-thirds pure oil weighing 26 poods 26 and a half pounds [962.5 pounds].”
Archive documents show that as a result of an unusual spring flood and the resulting destruction at the Ukhta field, oil production was suspended in 1748.
In 1749, only 216 pounds of oil were produced in the field, partly due to the fact that in August and September of that year, Fëdor Pryadunov was under arrest in Moscow on a complaint by the Main Medical Chancellery for failing to obey a prohibition and acting as a “vulgar uncertified healer treating all diseases of various types of people with rock oil.”
On October 19, 1750, at the direction of the Mining Board, Fëdor S. Pryadunov’s oil works was examined by a special commission consisting of Corporal Grigory Golenishchev and land burgomaster Fedot Rochev. Their report left a fairly detailed description of the Ukhta field, listing all facilities, including the following: “In the forest was a dilapidated yard, cleared canopy and roof, a new bathhouse in the yard, three overgrown lagoons and a half-barrel, and it contained a kneading trough, a bowl, a plate, and a petroleum scoop, as well as 55 logs, a new boat, and a petroleum tub.”
From that time on, Fëdor Pryadunov suffered a series of ordeals, including further arrests for tax evasion, and then imprisonment for many months in the Moscow debtor’s prison, where he passed away in March 1753.
After Fëdor S. Pryadunov’s death, the oil works in Ukhta passed from one owner to another. Available archive data show that the Ukhta oil field operated from 1746 through 1786, i.e., for less than 40 years.
In subsequent years, the Mining Board undertook attempts to resume oil production in Pechora Territory. These included reviewing a request from Novoye Usolye resident Vasily Ratov and Moscow merchant Aleksandr Sobolev on the possibility of “permitting the production, along the Izhma and Posva Rivers... of petroleum, which is said to exist in significant quantities at those locations.” In view of the bad experiences of their predecessors, including that of Fëdor Pryadunov, these entrepreneurs immediately made a request for concessional taxation, i.e., “release from payment of tithes for ten years—due to the newness of the plant, so that they could recoup the capital used in prospecting for the mineral.”
It is noteworthy that this request contains the first proposal for protectionism: “Prohibit shipments of oil from other Baltic Sea locations, for they could satisfy all of Russia with petroleum from the locations sought out by them.”
In the end, the Mining Board resolved to permit production by Vasily Ratov and Aleksandr Sobolev, but to deny tax relief, as there was no need for construction of a plant, because “petroleum is gathered from the water’s surface.” Unfortunately, historians have nothing further to say on the operations of this enterprise in subsequent years.
Nadyr Urazmetov: Oil Pioneer of the Volga Region
The first attempts to organize oil production in the Volga region were associated with the efforts of Major General Mikhail Opochinin, president of the Mining Board from 1753 to 1760. At that time a local entrepreneur, Nadyr Urazmetov, was granted a permit to open an oil field on the Sok River above Sergiyevsk.
In his letter to the Mining Board, Urazmetov wrote: “Last year, in 1752, we explored on our own serf land on the Kazan Road in the Ufa District along both sides of the Sok River above the town of Sergiyevsk upward, riding along the right side, near Mt. Sart-Ata, we found black petroleum in a small lake. Going further, above the Sergiyev line along a stream called Syrgut in Russian, or Kukorta in Tatar,... we also found petroleum.... And along the Sok and near Surshla and Usakla there is a lake and there is black petroleum in it, and above that lake atop the Sok River is the Choktemir Forest, and from that forest came a small spring containing black petroleum. From those sites we took about ten pounds or more of oil for a sample, and we ask the Mining Board to accept and test that black oil and give us permission to construct an oil works on the assigned proprietary land.”
On February 21, 1754, mining chemist Christian Lehmann sent the Mining Board a report on the analysis of the petroleum found by Nadyr Urazmetov, in which he noted its suitability for various purposes. The analysis was thorough, inasmuch as it determined the ratio of drams in white and red parts, or in modern language, the ratio of various petroleum fractions.
On September 15, 1754, the Orenburg Province Chancellery reported receiving “Her Imperial Majesty’s Decree 1132 of July 12 from the State Mining Board on the request of the Orenburg Province, Ufa District, Kazan Road, Nadyr District, Village of Nadyrova, foremen Nadyr Urazmetov, Yusup Nadyrov, and Aslyam da Khozi Mozyakovykh, acknowledging permission given them to build an oil works on their proprietary land in Ufa District, on Kazan Road, on Karmaly Creek and enjoining them from giving any offense to or imposing on or obstructing anyone in the construction of said plant and in the search for petroleum, both to members of other faiths and to other people of any title inhabiting their land.”