Ishimbayevo District soon had 10 geologic and six geophysical groups working within it. At the suggestion of geologists K. Chepikov, N. Gerasimov, and Ye. Tukhvinskaya, a detailed study of the geologic structure of the western regions of Bashkiria was begun. In the fall of 1934, craelius core drilling was begun there, and in 1935 strong oil shows were detected in Kungurian and Artinskian deposits.
A significant contribution to the development of the industry during the Second Five-Year Plan was also made by the engineering and technical community. In August 1933, Baku hosted the First Congress of the All-Union Scientific Engineering and Technical Society of Oil Workers [VNITON], and the 202 delegates that participated represented production enterprises, scientific organizations, and the governing bodies of the Soviet oil industry. The first man elected chairman of VNITON was academician Ivan Gubkin, a scientific authority whose popularity among oil industry workers did much to involve many major oil specialists actively in the work. The same VNITON Congress defined the basic directions of its activity, involving broad social assistance to the industry in solving scientific problems on the one hand and, on the other, discussing engineering production questions and developing solutions to them, increasing qualifications, and publishing reference works. During the early Five-Year Plans, the Society conducted a series of important conferences, meetings, debates, competitions, and other measures to promote stable development of the Soviet oil industry, and actively pursued publishing and professional development through courses, lectures, and speeches intended to raise the production qualifications of oil specialists.
Besides exploring for petroleum in the Volga region, specialists turned their attention to other territories of the country whose geology had not yet been investigated. On December 5, 1934, Moscow hosted the first conference of geologists devoted to the oil prospects of Western Siberia. The conference was chaired by academician Gubkin, and featured a detailed talk by engineering geologist Viktor Vasilyev about oil shows on the Bolshoy Yugan and Belaya Rivers. The decision of the specialists was unanimous: large-scale work to explore for petroleum had to begin immediately in this region.
However, despite the progress of the USSR oil industry, there were substantial shortcomings in its development. Principal among these were a low rate of making headway and slow mechanical drilling speed, an insufficient use of roller cutter and multiblade drill bits, complexity of oil-bearing deposits (petroleum lying in strata up to 6,500 feet deep that were oriented perpendicular to the Earth’s surface), and a high accident rate (due principally to drill pipe defect rates of up to 45%).
Although crude oil production grew by 20%, kerosene production by 38%, and gasoline and naphtha production by 7% from 1933 to 1935, the rates of gasoline and naphtha production were rather low, and did not correspond to the level of development of aviation and the fleet of motor vehicles and tractors. To address these needs, the USSR resumed mutually beneficial economic relations with the US in the oil industry, and on June 4, 1935, an agreement was concluded between the American company ALCO and the Amtorg Soviet-American Joint-Stock Company to supply the Soviet Union with a refinery capable of processing 12,000 barrels of Sterlitamak oil per day and refining it into high-octane gasoline, motor fuel, boiler fuel, residual asphalt, and gas.
The obvious shortcomings in the development of the oil industry in those years were noted by Pravda, the central Soviet newspaper. The lead editorial of this Party publication for October 14, 1936 stated: “Are not 2,000 accidents in nine months the result of incompetent placement of personnel and the lack of personal responsibility, technical leadership, and elementary order at the enterprises?!”
Nevertheless, progress was visible in 1936: the oil industry produced around 32 million tons of oil and gas, drilled more than 6.8 million feet of hole, and started more than 1,600 new wells. In 1936, both oil production trusts in the Volga-Urals region, Bashneft and Embaneft, produced around 1.7 million tons of crude (compared with 750,000 tons in 1935).
In 1936, work began on two new Central Asian fields, Khaydag and Uchkizyl, which produced around 330,000 tons of oil in that year. In Turkmenistan, Nebit-Dag produced around 385,000 tons of oil and preparations were being made to open up two new fields.
The first to fulfill the plan for all years was the Sakhalinneft Trust, where preparations were being made to develop the new Ekhabi field. Meanwhile, commercial oil was being produced at Chongelek field in the Crimea, while the new oil areas of Shongar and Kizyl-Tene in the western Absheron Peninsula and Pirgasat in the Amet District yielded commercial oil in the Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic.
In 1936, oil production began in Dagestan. Regions such as Achi-Su, Izberbash, and Kayakent were to produce more than 1.1 million tons of oil in 1937. New sites also appeared at the Mayneft Association in the Kuban region: the “Asphalt Mountain,” Kuisskoye, and Kura-Tsetse fields. Such a rapid rate of development of a large number of fields was primarily related to accelerated rates of exploration and an increase in drilling speed.
In the mid 1930s, the 440-mile Caspian-Orsk oil pipeline was placed in service, carrying Emba oil to the Orsk Refinery. In 1936, the 118-mile Makhachkala-Grozny oil pipeline was placed in service.
On December 20, 1936, the state committee formally accepted the commissioning of all the equipment at the Ishimbayevo Refinery, which had an annual capacity of 550,000 tons of oil. At the end of that same year the Ufa Cracking Refinery, which had a design capacity of 1.1 million tons of crude, was prepared for start-up. The refinery was expected to refine 80% of Bashkir oil. In January 1937, the first gasoline production system was put into operation at this refinery, and the first gasoline was produced.
On the whole, however, the USSR oil industry did not fulfill plan figures. Fulfillment was 68.2% for drilling; 63.6% for drilling speed; 88.3% for oil production; 84.15% for gas production; and 92.6% for refining. Thus, within the system of the USSR People’s Commissariat for Heavy Industry, which ended 1936 with a “triumphant report about fulfillment of the Five-Year Plan in four years,” the oil industry ended up on the list of industries that had fallen behind.
People’s Commissar for Heavy Industry Sergo Orjonikidze issued an order on September 5, 1936, noting that the oil industry had fallen seriously behind, asking for decisive steps to overcome deficiencies, and defining basic production goals for 1937. The People’s Commissariat planned to develop 14 new fields in 1937 and continue development in the eastern part of the country. The order of the people’s commissar spoke of a struggle to increase the quality of all work in the oil industry.
In 1937, Baku hosted the All-Union Conference of Oil Workers, which examined questions of improving equipment and technology of well drilling, oil production, transportation and storage, and also the introduction of new forms of labor organization.
By way of background, it should be noted that in that period the USSR oil industry had lost its export orientation, and crude oil and petroleum products export volumes had begun to decline rather quickly. By 1935, the proportion of exported gasoline production had decreased from 91.5% in 1929 to 21.4%, and kerosene exports decreased from 34% in 1929 to 8.5%.
This trend persisted into the Third Five-Year Plan. For example, although Soviet petroleum products and crude oil exports amounted to 2,127,000 tons in 1937, such exports dropped to 1,531,000 tons in 1938, and to only 791,000 tons in 1939.
Another factor that had a substantial negative effect on the oil industry of the 1930s was the implementation of mass political repression in the USSR. This dealt a substantial blow to the industry’s engineers and technicians, along with the most varied strata of the general population.