Coll 30/216 'Development of oil supplies in the Middle East.' [‎27v] (54/131)

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(iv) Embar-Dossor.
147. Production in these fields rose from 650,000 tons in 1938 to an
estimated total of 1,000,000 tons in 1944. The crude oil is conveyed by pipe-line
to the refineries at Orsk and Guriev.
(v) Trans-Caspia.
148. The field at-Neftedag to the south-east of Krasnovodsk produced^
436,000 tons in 1938; production in 1944 is estimated at 1,600,000 tons. The oil
is conveyed by rail to Krasnovodsk and thence by tanker across the Caspian to
Baku and Makhach-Kala for treatment.
149. The Baku oilfields have now been exploited for over 60 years and fears
of their approaching exhaustion have often been entertained. However, new
wells drilled in the shallow waters of the Caspian near Baku have proved success
ful and further drilling elsewhere in that region has revealed more extensive
reserves than were for long supposed to exist. Nevertheless, the possibility of
the exhaustion of the Baku fields within a measurable period of time and the
not unnatural desire to avoid having “ too many eggs in one basket ’ have
caused the Soviet Government to make strenuous efforts to discover ‘ ‘ a second
Baku.” The Grozny fields have proved very disappointing, and the extensive
deposits in the Emba-Dossor-Ufa regions, though promising, have not yet come
fullv up to expectations. In addition, there is the Soviet desire to discover and
exploit oil in regions to the east of Baku, in view of the general development
of Soviet industry in the east.
150. For all these reasons, the Soviet oil experts have for long had their
eyes on a number of hitherto unexploited regions in the Soviet Union and also
in northern Persia, where there are, as already stated, extensive indications of
petroleum.
Research Department, Foreign Office,
28 £ A February, 1945.