Floating city on the world’s largest lake

Neft Daşları is a network of oil wells and production facilities connected by kilometers of bridges across the Caspian Sea, the world’s largest lake. It is about 96.5 km from Azerbaijan’s capital Baku and about 6 hours by boat from the mainland. Neft Daşları is the world’s oldest offshore oil rig according to the Guinness Book of Records. In its heyday, the city was home to more than 5,000 residents, according to CNN.

However, in recent decades, the population of Neft Daşları gradually decreased, many areas became dilapidated and sank into the sea. Yet the city still functions as a symbol of Azerbaijan’s long history of oil exploration in the Caspian, a fossil fuel-rich lake region that is shrinking due to the climate crisis.

The history of Neft Daşları dates back to the Soviet period. In the late 1940s, oil workers gathered on a small island and built a drilling rig and a small house to live in. The first exploration well was drilled in 1949 and found oil. The first oil tanker came ashore in 1951 and construction of the city began. The city of Neft Daşları gradually expanded, consisting of iron piles driven into the sea and located several meters above sea level as if floating. In fact, the city is made up of nearly 2,000 oil wells and about 320 production facilities, connected by more than 160 km of bridges and nearly 97 km of oil and gas pipelines.

7 decommissioned ships were brought to the area and submerged in the water. The wreck forms an artificial bay that protects the city from wind and waves, although Neft Daşları remains vulnerable to storms and rough seas. “Some ships are visible from the water where they were submerged,” said Mirvari Gahramanli, director of the Azerbaijan Oil Workers’ Rights Organization.

Over the next few decades, Neft Daşları provided housing for workers, a bakery, a theater that could accommodate hundreds of people, shops, medical facilities, a soccer field and a helipad. The city even has trees and a park on steel structures. Some people in Azerbaijan call this “the 8th wonder of the world” or “the island of 7 ships”. The city is the center of oil production in the Caspian Sea and has produced nearly 180 million tons of oil in its 75 years of existence, according to Azerbaijan’s SOCAR oil company, which owns and operates Neft Daşları. In its heyday in 1967, Neft Daşları produced a record 7.6 million tons of oil.

But the city’s importance has waned recently as larger oil fields were developed and oil prices fluctuated. Output decreased to less than 3,000 tons/day (approximately 1 million tons/year), according to January data from SOCAR. Production in Neft Daşları accounts for only a small portion of Azerbaijan’s oil production, mainly for the domestic market. Along with that, the city’s population also decreased to about 3,000 people, with workers often working 15-day shifts at sea and 15-day shifts home on the mainland. Under the influence of storms in the Caspian Sea, many places in the city are crumbling. In 2008, several major bridge sections collapsed.

Authorities also received many reports of oil spills causing pollution in Neft Daşları, and untreated wastewater pouring into the Caspian Sea. The future of the giant city on water when it runs out of oil is a long-standing problem. Some people believe that Neft Daşları could become a tourist destination or museum because the city is the cradle of offshore oil exploration and is part of Azerbaijan’s heritage.