🇦🇿NEFT DASHLARI

40°17'14.49"N 50°43'13.65"E

 

(from Senses Atlas)

   Annecy is the "Venice of the Alps", Saint Petersburg is the "Venice of the North", Fort Lauderdale is the "Venice of America" and so on. Each town with canals has the nickname of Venice, doesn't matter where it is (Interesting article of other Venices). But today we're going to focus on the "Soviet Venice", which is far more interesting than the others as it is actually just a settlement made for the workers of an offshore oil platform. Welcome to Neft Daşları, the city of oil.

   As you probably know, oil is for the world powers like a bone for the dogs; once they find it, they go immediately for it and can't let it. Exactly this happened to the Soviets. In the late 1940s, geologists found a big oil deposit beneath the Caspian sea and some years later all was ready to extract. The Soviet Union built an offshore oil platform 40 kilometers away from the nearest coast which grew every year (in both, population and surface) as the oil deposit seemed to have no end. And that was the way Neft Daşları was created. By the way, even if the name sounds pretty cool it literally means "oil rocks", which, well, doesn't sound as nice as Neft Daşları.

Neft Daslari's octopus arms (From Senses Atlas)

   Like I said before, the city gained more surface and workers every year, but how did it adapt to the growth? For that, we take a look back to its creation. At first, it was just a little island with a home for workers who tried to make the first oil well. In 1949, they succeeded, and this was when the government decided to send more workers and create more infrastructures. The first step was to sink some ships and with the wrecks create a perimeter which would equal to the limits of the initially planned platform. Buildings and wells were attached to the floor with metal poles and were connected with bridges that eventually doubled and triplicated in number.

   In what concerns the workers, they smashed them inside narrow apartments blocks. At least they had a bit of sympathy left, and allowed them social life by building a theater and a park with a football pitch, which is actually not that bad. Other facilities included a popular bakery, some shops and a hospital (quite weird to work as a baker in an oil plant though).

It looks like a normal neighborhood in this image, doesn't it (From CNN)

   However, in the 1970s, the baker had up to 5000 customers. But after that, the population decreased and the city didn't grow that much, as oil started to be seen as a highly polluting form of energy. Later, with the independence of Azerbaijan, the company SOCAR took over and still does exploit oil, but in a lower quantity; leading to a clear decline in the day of tomorrow. Even so, it holds the Guinness World Record for the oldest offshore oil platform (not something I would really care about, but hey, it's something).

Neft Daşları's evolution. An image really is worth a 1000 words (From Senses Atlas)

   Anyway, it is very probable that in a future "Oil Rocks" will just be a forgotten ghost town if it stops extracting oil. Or the other thing that could happen is a flooding (I mention this because in 2015, a building fell into the sea during a thunderstorm), so maybe it isn't that great to be a Venice in the end.

  

Sources: CNN, Senses Atlas, Illuminem, Wikipedia