Fire & oil of Absheron — Yanar Dag, Ateshgah and the Oil Rocks

The element

Fire from under the earth

Beneath Absheron lie vast reserves of natural gas and oil. In places the gas seeps to the surface and ignites by itself; such eternal fires astonished travellers since antiquity and gave Azerbaijan its name, the “Land of Fire”.

Fire-worshippers came to these flames, and in modern times the same depths brought wealth: in the 19th–20th centuries Baku and Absheron became one of the main centres of the world oil industry.

Oil here is not merely a resource but a destiny: it shaped the look of the peninsula, its city, its people and even world energy.

01

Yanar Dag

The “burning mountain” — a slope where flame bursts ceaselessly from the earth. It does not go out in rain or snow. One of the symbols of fiery Absheron.

02

Ateshgah

The fire temple at Surakhani, which for centuries drew Zoroastrians, Hindus and Sikhs to a place where natural gas burned.

Dedicated site →

03

The oil boom

At the turn of the 19th–20th centuries Baku produced about half of all the world’s oil; the Nobels and Rothschilds came here, and Absheron grew a forest of derricks.

04

Oil Rocks

Neft Daşları — an oil workers’ settlement on stilts in the open sea, founded in 1949; one of the oldest offshore fields on the planet.

05

Mud volcanoes

Near Absheron are dozens of mud volcanoes: they erupt clay and gas, which sometimes ignites — another sign of the activity of the depths.

06

Gas today

Caspian oil and gas remain the basis of the country’s economy; they are extracted both on the land of Absheron and far out in the open sea.

History of oil

Baku oil: milestones

Absheron is one of the cradles of the world oil industry. The key dates of that history.

Antiquity

The oil and burning gas of Absheron have been known since time immemorial; oil is gathered from wells and used for centuries.

1846

At Bibi-Heybat near Baku one of the world’s first oil wells is drilled — more than a decade before the American one.

1870s–1880s

The Nobels and Rothschilds arrive in Baku; a rapid oil boom begins and the factories of the “Black City” rise.

around 1900

Baku produces roughly half of all the world’s oil — the oil capital of the planet.

1949

In the open Caspian the Oil Rocks are founded — the world’s first large offshore oil field of such scale.

1994

The “Contract of the Century” for developing the Caspian fields is signed — the start of Azerbaijan’s new oil era.

Нефтяные Камни — морской посёлок нефтяников

Neft Daşları

A city at sea

The Oil Rocks

Dozens of kilometres from shore, right in the Caspian, stands a whole city on trestles — the Oil Rocks. It has roads, dwellings, canteens and even greenery, all on stilts above the sea.

Founded in 1949, it became one of the oldest and most unusual offshore oil fields in the world and a true symbol of Baku oil.

“Here oil and fire are not a resource but the character of the land. Absheron is unthinkable without them.”jnews.az