Soon thereafter, in late September, General Matyushkin, then in Astrakhan, received a decree from Emperor Peter the Great, “On the Entry of His Imperial Majesty into Eternal Possession of the Cities of Derbent, Baku, and Other Provinces.”
In May 1724, the emperor again ordered that “white oil, 1,000 poods [120 barrels] or as much as possible,”17 be sent to him. Fulfilling this order, General Mikhail Matyukhin sent more than 18 barrels of “white” oil from Baku to Astrakhan in the summer of that year, which was later delivered to Moscow.
After the death of Peter the Great in February 1725, interest in the practical application of petroleum waned considerably, but archive documents imply that three barrels of oil were sent to the merchant Johann Lubs in Holland by decision of the Commerce Board in February 1726. The foreign middleman was asked to learn its real price and possible sales volumes. Judging by the Commerce Board report, demand for petroleum in Holland proved small, yet, despite the commercial inauspiciousness of the results, this exercise is significant in that it represents the first attempt, carried out more than 280 years ago, by a Russian government institution to undergo a marketing study of the foreign petroleum market.
Yakov Shakhanin, “Mineral Hunter”
The monarchical successors to Emperor Peter the Great in the following decade could not hold the Caspian additions to the Empire, including the oil fields on the Absheron Peninsula. The succession of palace coups during the time of “female rule” substantially weakened the Russian Empire’s foreign policy positions. As a result, under the Treaty of Resht of 1732 and the Ganja Treaty of 1735, the Caspian regions were returned to Persia.
Thus, petroleum was once again an overseas good for Russians. In 1733, Dr. Johann Lerche, a member of the Russian embassy in Persia, visited the Absheron Peninsula. “On July 30, 1733,” he wrote, “I rode five versts [3.3 miles] from the unquenchable flame to Balakhany, to the black petroleum springs.... Fifty-two of these wells were found during the times of the Persian shah; by means of these, great trade was carried on in those days, but now only 26 remain intact.... Wells 20 sazhens [140 feet] deep, of which one flows very strongly and delivers 500 batmans of oil per day (a batman is 15 pounds of Russian weight [13.5 lb. avdp.]); they boil strongly, so they can be heard.”18
Additionally, Dr. Lerche noted one extremely interesting fact— namely, the distillation of petroleum as a well-known process. As he put it, “The oil does not catch fire quickly, it is dark brown in color, and when it is distilled, it becomes light yellow. The white oil is somewhat turbid, but distillation makes it as clear as alcohol, and this ignites very quickly.”
However, despite the abundance and quality of Absheron Peninsula oil, the high price and difficulty of delivering Baku crude to Russia forced domestic entrepreneurs to finance oil prospecting directly in promising areas of the Russian Empire.
In 1735, the “mineral hunter” Yakov Shakhanin, under orders from the Mining Board, obtained the right to prospect for metal and mineral ores in all provinces and regions. His persistent prospecting quickly yielded positive results. He found sulfur and aluminous ores on the shores of the Volga, and even built a small processing mill, but could not take advantage of the fruits of his labors. As a result of a commercial conflict due to a disagreement with comrades (that is, with other participants who co-owned the enterprise), the Yaroslavl town hall turned Shakhanin over as a conscript, and he was sent to serve as a soldier to the 10th company of the Karelian Regiment.
Torn away from his favorite business of mineral prospecting by military service, Yakov Shakhanin decided in February 1738 to take a bold step: He submitted a report directly to the Cabinet of her Imperial Majesty Anna Ioannovna, asking that he be released from his conscript obligation and that the mineral fields he had discovered be used for the benefit of the state. In the report, he also informed the Empress of the oil fields and saltpeter deposits he had found in the Volga region: “There is more of my saltpeter and mineral petroleum mine, specifically along the Volga River below the city of Sibirsk near the city of Tetyushi, and also saltpeter in the Novodevichy Hills near the palace village of Zhegulikh, and 20 versts [13.2 miles] above the city of Syzran, in the hills near the village of Kostychey, saltpeter lies about two miles.”
First Cabinet Minister Count Andrey Osterman (1686–1747), who received Yakov Shakhanin’s appeal, imposed the following resolution: “Based on this report, transfer the hunter of the Military Board to the artillery, so that it may use him in those affairs, and so that it may order those saltpeter sites shown by him to be certified by knowledgeable masters.”
Based on this directive, the Main Artillery Chancellery sent Yakov Shakhanin, the “mineral hunter,” to the Samara sulfur and saltpeter mines located in a Sergiyev suburb, and ordered their director, Commissar Vasily Verkhovsky, to “travel to the saltpeter and petroleum sites indicated by Shakhanin and certify the same.... And those sites that are several versts [miles], describe in detail... take about ten pounds each at various sites for judgment of quality, and where there is petroleum in the hills.” Thus, the leadership of the artillery chancellery was not only interested in saltpeter needed for the production of gunpowder, but also in petroleum, since their duties included the preparation of holiday light shows.
The expedition confirmed Shakhanin’s information regarding the presence of petroleum on the high right bank of the Volga. An oil sample taken there in early 1741 by special courier Lieutenant Mikhail Lugovsky was delivered to Moscow, and then to St. Petersburg. On April 16, 1741, the Main Artillery Chancellery sent it to the Academy of Sciences for further study.
On April 23, 1741, in the laboratory of the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences, Academician Johann Amman (1707–1741) completed his analysis of the sample oil from the Samara sulfur mills and observed: “The oil sent smells very bad, and it is thick, black, and very dirty. It does not burn, even if a lit match is held over it, or even if the match is dipped into the oil. But when a lit cotton paper wick is placed in the oil, it burns quietly and a small flame rises above it.... In my opinion, it is good for nothing other than for making grease, torches, and tar strings, as well as wicks where an unclear, weak flame is needed. In addition, it can be used in icon lamps in place of a wick if its finest and lightest particles are separated by distillation, then it will be nearly the same as simple Persian oil.”
An American chemist, Yale University professor Benjamin Silliman, came to the same conclusion, that distillation of the petroleum could yield a quality lighting material, but that conclusion was drawn over a century later, in 1855. While his report played a decisive role in accelerating the development of the American oil industry in the latter half of the 19th century, the thorough findings of Academician Amman in 1741, alas, remained unnoticed in Russia.
As for the fate of the “mineral hunter” Yakov Shakhanin, he made an attempt to create a partnership to develop the Syzran oil fields and tar deposits, but failed for unexplained reasons.
Fëdor Pryadunov’s Oil Works
Twenty years after the death of the first Russian Emperor, Peter the Great, the Mining Board once again returned to the issue of Russian oil produced in the Empire’s North. The history of the North’s development in this regard is tied to entrepreneur Fëdor Savelyevich Pryadunov (1696–1753), a pioneer of the domestic oil business, and the creation and operation of his oil works, the first such works in Russia.