Eight years later, in his Topography of the Orenburg Province [Topografiya Orenburgskoy gubernii], Pëtr Rychkov (1712–1777), a corresponding member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences, wrote the following about Nadyr Urazmetov’s enterprise: “There are petroleum springs in various places near the aforementioned Sergiyevsk, where there were oil works before this. By decision of the Mining Board on June 16, 1754, in response to the request of the Tatar foreman Nadyr Urazmetov, a decree was issued to this Nadyr and his son Yusup to start up a plant near the Zakamskaya Line on the Karamala Creek, for which they found four petroleum springs nearby and submitted samples of oil from them to the Board, which the Board’s tests proved to be oil.”
In early 1757, the Orenburg Mining Command sent a report to the Mining Board regarding certification of an oil works. The report stated that “on August 21, 1756, geodetic student Pavel Zubrinsky was [sent] from this command to perform the prescribed certification and description, and he certified and described and charted the site.” The certification and description were then forwarded to the State Mining Board on December 19, 1756. It should be noted that Zubrinsky’s chart of 1756 has survived and it is held in an archive in Moscow. Russian historians believe it is the first map of a major oil field of the Volga-Urals region.
Unfortunately, however, Nadyr Urazmetov was unable to complete the work he started. The “Report of the Orenburg Mining Command to the Mining Board,” dated December 19, 1756, on the inspection of Urazmetov’s oil works, states that “Nadyr Urazmetov, having received the Mining Board’s order, came to his village and contracted a serious illness, for which he has still received no treatment. However, in the previous year 1755, at the site where the works was to be built, he did erect a barn for cooking at the first opportunity. But only due to that illness, he could not build a proper plant... nor properly start it. But a comrade of his son Yusup Nadyrov... wrote to his colleagues without his consent, and he, Yusup, does not wish to build the works. But he, Nadyr, when he is free of the illness, wishes to build the works according to his commitment.” However, the Mining Board did not take Nadyr Urazmetov’s illness into consideration, the bureaucrats would not wait for his recovery, and in late 1757 Urazmetov was removed from the list of works owners. To date, no further information on the fate of this pioneer of the Volga oil business has been found in the Russian archives.
Mikhail Lomonosov and Russian Oil
During the reign of Empress Catherine the Great [Yekaterina II] from 1762 to 1796, the Russian state gained a new impetus for its development. The Manifest of 1775 and the “Charter of Rights and Benefits for Russian Cities” opened up new prospects for development of industrial production and trade in the country.
The renowned natural scientist, experimenter, and Academician Mikhail Lomonosov (1711–1765) made a solid contribution to the development of the scientific and industrial potential of the Russian Empire. Among his many achievements, he was the first to formulate the universal principle of conservation of matter and motion, which formed the basis of physical chemistry.
In 1743, Lomonosov completed his manuscript, First Principles of Metallurgy or Mining [Pervyye osnovaniya metallurgii, ili rudnykh del]. In preparing the book for publication, he added a section, “On the Earth’s Layers,” which dwelled on the plant origin of petroleum, peat and coal. The book, which was published in 1763, contained a lot of new ideas on fossil fuels and their origins. For instance, in “On the Earth’s Layers,” the Russian scientist wrote that underground heat drives petroleum out of coal and peat, so that it “enters various dry and wet clefts.”
In Lomonosov’s opinion, petroleum could also form as a byproduct in the conversion of peat to coal. The talented scientist came to the following conclusion: strong underground fires produce thick, black tar such as asphalt or jet, while milder underground heat produces clear, light crude. Lomonosov supported the conclusion with the results of his observations on the distillation of “oily materials:” “when it is produced over a high flame, the oil comes out black and thick; conversely, a light flame makes it light and clear.” As an adjunct to the physics class of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences, he carried out the distillation of petroleum under laboratory conditions a number of times in the course of his experiments. (It should be noted that the State Historical Museum in Moscow has preserved his laboratory.)
The scientist wrote that “the thinnest material from peat and from primary distillation oil, collected in some warm cavity, is redistilled by secondary actions, which chemists call ‘rectification.’ ” Thus, Mikhail Lomonosov assumed the formation of petroleum through the prolonged action of mild heat and recognized its migration from its formation sites into porous layers.
According to his theory, plant and animal remains were petrified, and the partially burned bodies gave rise to peat, coal, and amber. Peat originates from swamp vegetation. The origins of coal could be attributed, he thought, to peat bogs via carburization in the absence of air under the influence of moisture, high temperature, and pressure. Lomonosov concluded that peat, coal, and petroleum were the products of the natural refinement of organic matter. “We can be confident that these hot underground materials originate from growing things because of their lightness, for all minerals sink in water, but petroleum floats on it, even though after being underground it has taken up some heavy rocky material.”
Later, the respected Russian scientist and Academician Vladimir Vernadsky (1863–1945) praised Mikhail Lomonosov’s theory, stating: “I don’t know of a single 18th-century theory that could be compared to these views of Lomonosov.” And even to this day, Lomonosov’s theory of the origins of fossil fuels, developed in the latter half of the 18th century, continues to attract strong advocates and followers.
The First Expeditions of the Russian Academy of Sciences
During the reign of Empress Catherine the Great, the fields of mining and metallurgy continued to grow progressively in Russia, and many Russian scientists, following Lomonosov’s footsteps, made solid contributions, primarily in the organization of the first scientific studies of the country’s territory.
In 1762, Pëtr Rychkov (1712–1777), corresponding member of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences, presented one of the first descriptions of surface oil shows in the Volga region, near the Airyaka River, in his book, Topography of the Orenburg Province [Topografiya Orenburgskoy gubernii]: “Variegated oil shows can be seen, namely blue and yellow, white, black, and green, and on the water’s surface we observe tar-like material that produces a very disgusting smell.”
Johann Schlatter (1708–1768), president of the Mining Board, retired in 1767 for health reasons and his place was taken by Count Musin-Pushkin. Previously, the count had been a prosecutor, a member of the board of Main Mining Plants in Yekaterinburg, and vice president of the Mining Board. He was also known for having written the first domestic instruction manual on methods of extracting coal and of combating mine gases and shaft flooding during the tunneling process. At his direction, the natural scientist Stepan Vonevin was sent to the Caucasus region in 1768, where he compiled a map of the region’s minerals, marking the location of petroleum springs near the Terek River.