Before long, an even higher government agency was studying the issue of the Perm oil. On September 6, 1929, the Labor and Defense Council passed a resolution instructing “the USSR VSNKh and the USSR State Planning Committee to support 1929–30 target figures for a Uralneft rate of development that would enable at least 50 wells to be drilled with the assured use of the most advanced drilling methods and of methods most suitable for the soil.” On September 30, the VSNKh passed a terse resolution, “On the Plan for Uralneft Operations in 1929–1930,” which read: “In accordance with the Labor and Defense Council’s resolution of September 6, 1929, the drilling program presented by Uralneft is approved.”
Given the importance of the work and the large amount of drilling that needed to be completed, the VSNKh passed a decision creating the Uralneft Trust on October 27. The Sterlitamak office of exploratory drilling led by Konstantin Kholdyrev and Kirill Prits was soon set up within the organization. Veteran oil expert Dmitry Shashin managed the drilling operations, while the respected geologists Aleksey Blokhin and Varvara Nosal were in charge of the geologic service. In a report on operating activities for fiscal 1929–30 signed by Roman Buchatsky, the Uralneft Trust indicated that it employed 650 blue- and white-collar workers as of December 1929. By the winter of 1929–1930, a total of 29 wells had been started near Verkhnechusovskiye Gorodki, plus two more near Kizel-Gubakha and one each at Cherdyn, Usolye, Shumkovo, and Ust-Kishert.
On June 1, 1930, Uralsky rabochy published an article titled “36 Derricks at Uralneft Fields,” in which it stated: “Well 1 was put into operation on May 24 with a daily production rate of 55 tons. Drilling continued at Wells 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 11, and 14 on May 21–25. Over this period, 132.3 meters [434 feet] of hole were drilled (935.7 meters [3,070 feet] were drilled in early May). The foundation and steam boilers are being modified at Well 12, the boiler room and frame are being built at Well 13, the foundation is being laid under the steam engine at Well 15, the foundation is being fortified at Wells 18 and 25, the boiler room and bridge deck over the river are being assembled at Well 25, and circular saws are being installed at Well 27. Wells 101 and 1 have produced 364 tons over 25 days. At present, Uralneft has 36 wells that are being operated, drilled or are in the process of being built.”
The ambitious program for the development of the Chusovaya oil region required the creation of a special construction organization. On January 27, 1930, the All-Union Oil and Gas Industry Association issued Decree 18, in which it proposed that the Neftestroy Trust “urgently set up a separate office in Perm called Uralneftegazstroy [‘Ural Oil and Gas Industry Construction and Erection Trust’].” A. Gollender, aformer deputy head of Azneftestroy, was appointed director of the new company.
Senior Soviet Party leadership attached particular importance to Perm oil at the time owing to the realization of rather ambitious plans in the Urals region as part of the USSR’s industrialization. On February 19, 1930, the VSNKh confirmed as much when it issued Decree 868 “On the Renaming of Uralneft’s Verkhnechusovskiye Gorodki Oil Fields as the Comrade Stalin Oil Fields,” a reflection of how the oil industry’s role was perceived in the industrialization process. As part of plans to fortify the infrastructure and logistics of the exploration being carried out in the Urals, in May 1930 Azerbaijan sent 104 rail cars to the region carrying equipment and instruments (including 17 drilling rigs and a power station).
Even though record milestones had been prescribed for the oil industry, the bar was set even higher by a Central Committee report presented by Stalin at the 16th Congress of the All-Union Communist Party on June 26, 1930. In that report, Stalin noted: “Under the Five-Year Plan, the oil industry was to produce 977 million rubles worth of products by 1932–33. But, in 1929–30, it is already producing 809 million rubles in products, that is, 83% of the amount projected in the Five-Year Plan for 1932–33. That means we are fulfilling the Five-Year Plan for the oil industry in some two-and-a-half years.”43
Expressing his support for the Party line at the Congress, Valerian Kuybyshev (1888–1935), the chairman of the VSNKh Presidium, stated: “No mission is more important for the geologic agencies than to firmly establish our ore reserves and fuel resources which can be used to further develop metallurgy.” A resolution passed by the 16th Congress on July 12 states: “The country’s industrialization can no longer be based solely on one southern metallurgical foundation. A vital condition for the country’s rapid industrialization is the creation of a second core coal and metallurgical center for the USSR in the East using the coal and ore fields of the Urals and Siberia.”
Following a Party forum in Perm in July 1930, a conference was held at the Uralneft office that included academicians Ivan Gubkin and Aleksandr Arkhangelsky, as well as Ural Regional Executive Committee Deputy Director V. Andronnikov, Uralneft Director K. Rumyantsev, and other prominent workers. The conference resulted in the creation of a broad program to perform a geological survey of the oil-bearing capacity of the Kama Valley.
The arrival of 725 skilled specialists from Azneft and Grozneft in the Ural region in October 1930 provided a new impetus for further oilfield exploration and development. In December 1930, a larger trust called Vostokneft was established on the core of the Uralneft trust to search for petroleum in the Kama Valley, Bashkortostan, Syzran, the Trans-Baikal region, and other eastern regions of the country.
The first All-Union Congress of Geologists and Petroleum Experts was held in Moscow in January 1931. The Congress discussed in detail the geologic structure of the western range of the Urals Mountains and the oil fields and drew up a new, broader plan for exploration near Verkhnechusovskiye Gorodki. The plan was approved by Soyuzneft executive committee resolutions of January 25 and February 5, which set forth plans for exploration and production wells around Verkhnechusovskiye Gorodki.
At the October 27, 1931 meeting of the oil branch of the VSNKh Main Administration for Fuel, Vostokneft presented a program for the following year that noted a need to complete exploration in “the following Urals regions—Verkhnechusovskiye Gorodki, Krasnousolye, and Yurezan.”
Implementation of such a large-scale program, however, ran into serious obstacles owing to a lack of financing and a low level of logistics support. Ural Region officials were becoming more and more pessimistic because no new free-flowing wells were being discovered and they had been unable to report new “victories of labor” to Moscow on a regular basis. This also caused concern among local Party officials. On June 4, 1932, the secretary of the Verkhnechusovskiye Gorodki District Committee sent a memo to Ivan Kabakov, the first secretary of the Ural regional committee of the All-Union Communist Party, describing the current situation at the Verkhnechusovskiye Gorodki oil field in detaiclass="underline" “From the time that oil was discovered in 1929 until today, more than 50 wells have been drilled, amounting to 24,771.06 linear meters [81,270 linear feet]. Of that number, five wells were found to contain commercial quantities of oil, with flow rates of up to 1,100 tons per month, and most of the drilled wells showed signs of oil-bearing capacity.... I believe, Comrade Kabakov, that after spending tens of millions of rubles on exploration and not yet obtaining a conclusive result concerning Ural oil, it would be highly premature to leave Verkhnechusovskiye Gorodki since exploration is far from finished and considerably fewer funds are needed now than the previous millions. As much as individual employees of the company have tried to prove otherwise, the fact remains that Wells 1, 1a, and 48 have been producing oil for three years—oil that is extremely rich in terms of its chemical properties and of commercial significance.”44