Today, Neft Daslari is a crumbling dystopia, a vast series of oil platforms slowly being eaten by the waves of the Caspian Sea. But like all good dystopias, it was once an industrial marvel—"Stalin’s Atlantis," a veritable floating oil city, home to 5,000 workers, a movie theater, hotel, library, and a sprawling network of roads. And, yes, the world’s first offshore oil platform, which was built off the coast of Baku in the wake of the second World War.Der Spiegel explains:After the war, Soviet engineers took a closer look at a reef that mariners called the “Black Rock.” They built a shed on the tiny island and conducted test drilling. During the night of Nov. 7, 1949, they struck top-quality oil at a depth of 1,100 meters below the seabed and shortly thereafter, the world’s first offshore oil platform was built at the spot, now renamed Neft Dashlari, or “oily rock.” “Platform” is a hopelessly inadequate word for the many-armed monster of steel and timber that gradually spread across the waves of the sea …
Seriously. The structure was built on giant sunk ships, huge mounds of dirt, and landfill. Eventually, Azerbaijan was pumping 3/4th of the USSR’s oil, and Neft Daslari was a boomtown. Good pay, the novelty of living on a proto-Waterworld set, and prostitutes wonder it was known a “Stalinist utopia for the working class.”
It even earned a commemorative stamp.
But the thing about oil is, it dries up. So while there are still people employed on Dashlari today, they’re a mere fraction of the workforce that once made the place a wonder.
As less money flows out, less flows in—it’s rusting away now, the hotels abandoned, the roads disintegrating. Like working on a perpetually sinking ship. Now it’s a curiosity. We set action films on it. It would be too expensive to tear most of it down; best to just let the sea take it.Hat tip to Philip Bump, and see Der Spiegel for a nice long slideshow with more images of Stalin’s sinking Atlantis here
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