The Geologist Who Put Surgut on the Map

The year was 1961, and the city was Surgut. Of course, with only a few thousand residents at the time, Surgut ?€” in the heart of the Tyumen region in western Siberia ?€” couldn't really be called a "city."

This was before it became known as "oil country." This was before the efforts of an Azeri geologist gave birth to an oil rush rivaling that of Baku's in the late 1800s.

On March 21, 1961, Farman Salma-nov hurried back to his base from the oil fields and fired off the following telegram, which would be repeated in radio broadcasts across the Soviet Union: "A fountain of oil is gushing. Do you get it?"

Even though the telegram was addressed to Geology Ministry officials in Moscow and Tyumen, the wry tone was meant for those who didn't believe in Salmanov, who laughed at him and thought he was insane for oil prospecting in the middle of nowhere.

History has proved Salmanov, 69, correct ?€” more correct than he himself had ever dreamed. In fact, western Siberian oil is what drove the Soviet economy, provided hard-currency earnings and fed the nation.

"He is one of the greats," said Rady Razyanpov, chief geologist with Yukos operator Yuganskneftegaz. "And as far as western Siberia is concerned, he is considered to be a god."

However, a new generation of exploration has come about, and Russia's hydrocarbon centers have moved to Timan-Pechora in the northwest, the Sakhalin peninsula in the Far East and the Caspian Sea basin. Except for a few fields, western Siberia's oil reserves will be exhausted in the next decade.

That doesn't mean Sal-ma-nov's work there is done. As founder and head of Rospan International ?€” a natural gas exploration and extraction company ?€” he oversees the fields that he calls his "favorites": New Urengoi and Eastern Urengoi in the Tyumen region.

The two huge plots are outlined in red on a map hidden behind Venetian blinds.

"These are our licenses," he says, drawing the blinds. Then he points to a large area east of the fields. "This is what [Boris] Berezovsky bought. He even called me one time wanting to buy my license out. I hung up on him. I don't like dealing with people like that."

Born in Morul, a village near Baku, Azerbaijan's capital, Salmanov came from a family of farmers. After graduating from school with honors, he entered the Azerbaijan Industrial Institute and was immediately drawn to geology and the business of oil.

"When I was 15 or 16, an oilman, Nikolai Baibakov, went into government and starting fixing up everything around my town," Salmanov said. "He built roads, put up infrastructure and repaired buildings. Because of that, I decided that I wanted to be a geologist, too."

After graduation, Salmanov asked to be sent to Siberia, a place he knew of only through the wondrous stories of his grandfather, who spent many years there in exile under the tsarist regime. Salma-nov's professors also considered it a probable gold mine of oil and gas.

He says he was always sure, even when his team kept hitting water instead of oil.

The Urals are to the west, he says, gesturing to the multicolored map. To the east are the high plains. In the middle, you end up with a low valley that was once covered by the sea.

"By the geology, it was obvious that it was rich in minerals," he said.

But knowledge of geology wasn't enough to get oil out of the ground. Salmanov needed luck. And he didn't have much between 1955, when he was the first geologist to start exploration around Surgut, and 1961, when he first struck oil.

"We struck water at our first well, and naturally, my optimism waned," he said. "Members of my team left; some thought I was delusional in my beliefs. But we kept on drilling until we found something. I never was in doubt."

Salmanov spent 33 years in Siberia, where he met his wife and where all his children were born. In 1985, then-Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev visited him in Tyumen, from where all exploratory operations were run, and was so impressed he decided Salmanov should be working in Moscow.

The next year, the Geology Ministry requested he come on board. Salmanov refused. Later that year, the Politburo took it into their own hands. Salmanov figured he had no choice.

He was deputy geology minister and later minister until May 1992, when it was merged with what is now called the Natural Resources Ministry.

After the Geology Ministry was liquidated, Salmanov and a colleague promised to invest in the development of the New Urengoi and Eastern Urengoi fields in exchange for licenses from the Tyumen regional administration. They struck a deal, and Rospan was formed.

Rospan ?€” a subsidiary of Itera ?€” now employs about 1,000 people in Siberia and Moscow. The company took control of the licensed territories and built them from the ground up: roads, wells and housing. The first gas condensate was extracted in 1996. Since then, extraction has seen geometric growth, with Rospan selling 296,236 cubic meters of condensate and about 1 million cubic meters of natural gas in 2000.

Salmanov declined to reveal the confirmed reserves, saying it was a company secret. However, at its peak the fields should yield 5 million cubic meters of condensate and 20 billion cubic meters of gas a year.

Unlike your run-of-the-mill businessman, Salmanov doesn't care about getting as much money as possible. He says he only wants to create something good for the country and for the region in which he spent half of his life.

"From the moment we moved here, my wife and I couldn't get used to it," he said. "I don't even pine for Baku. I never did. It is Siberia that I consider home."