La Citi Du Petrole, Thinline Documentaries
La Citi Du Petrole is a unique project. No western film crew has ever been given such extensive access to the Oil Rocks site. It is a fascinating insight into a weird and foreign world where time has almost, but not quite, stopped. It shows how, despite the collapse of communism and the Soviet Project, there are some 2,500 people living as Workers inside a bubble of party philosophy. As if life on the sea somehow froze them in the 60s.
As a piece of industrial history the Oil Rocks, or Neft Daslari in Azeri, is very special. It was the world’s first off-shore platform. However it is not just a platform, more like a functioning town. At its peak there were some 190 miles of roadway constructed on piles above the sea. There are multi story apartment blocks to house the workers, football pitches, shops and cultural facilities. It is located about 100km from Baku itself and 45km from the nearest shore. If you have seen The World Is Not Enough, you’ll know what it looks like on fire.
It was an industrial site of huge significance for the Soviet Union, Khrushchev even bothered to visit, which was a rarity. Its image was used in countless propaganda films, celebrating the efforts of The Workers at sea. Today it continues to be key to the modern day independent Azerbaijani state, for good and for bad.
Stalin ordered the construction of the site in 1949. He personally knew the vast potential oil reserves in the Caspian Sea from his time as a worker in Baku. He also understood that oil was needed for the survival of the Soviet Project, a potent symbol of superiority over the West. This was only half the picture. Oil Rocks came with a human and environmental cost. The conditions in the Caspian Sea are often harsh and stormy. As one former manager from the film puts it, ‘when a man is up against the sea then he has no chance’. In November 1957 many died trying to repair the pipelines during severe storms. The total number of deaths over the years on the site is unknown, neither the Soviets nor the Azeris are too hot on publishing records. Similarly so, the Caspian Sea is one of the most polluted bodies of water on the planet. Environmental controls were, and continue to be, very lax. When I was in Baku you can smell the oil in the air from the city and by the waters edge you can see the pools of floating oil sludge on the surface. Azerbaijan is estimated to be the most heavily contaminated and polluted of all the former Soviet states, with over 30,000 hectares of petroleum contaminated soil. The entire coastline of the Abershon Penninsula is unfit for swimming and coastal development and there is even a shortage of safe drinking water.
Oil Rocks celebrated its 60th birthday in 2009 and Marc Wolfsenburger of the Swiss filmmakers, Thinline Documentaries, was there. His documentary played at numerous international film festivals. It also won a handful of environmental awareness awards for drawing attention to the state of the crumbling infrastructure and the sites uncertain future. This is probably not what the Azerbaijani State Oil giants, SOCAR, had in mind when they allowed the Thinline team the access they did. The Azeri oil company, worth some $20 billion, was close to completing a refurbishment to, amongst other things, allow each worker a toilet of their own. The refurbishment was described as a gift from the President to reward the workers. Everything in Azerbaijan is described as a gift from the President, including corruption, massive human rights violations, embezzlement and surely the ultimate wastage of one of the most valuable natural resources sites on the planet.
Wolfsenburger’s film doesn’t quite go as far as to state any of this, neither does it need to. Thinline have a mixed portfolio of work. Wolfsenburger is currently working on a project highlighting Alzheimers issues, and since La Citi Du Petrole was released he has been filming projects in Saudi Arabia and North Korea. None of these projects are normal, they are all controversial, yet La Citi Du Petrole makes no overt political statement or moral aspersion on the Azerbaijani state. It merely shows the human side of a very inhuman business. If this is what he does with his work in North Korea and Saudi Arabia then it will be interesting to see the results.
Despite the various environmental awards, his film has a real and touching human angle. His characters are the long time residents on the platforms. They seem almost timeless, like Soviet throwbacks, unaware of the fall of the iron curtain. There is one old lady who has been a worker there since she was in her 20s, she is now in her 80s and despite years of life at sea she is as alert and clear as someone decades younger. She declares she went because, ‘I will go where The Party needs me to go’. Her enduring loyalty to the system and belief in power of The Worker means she could never exist in the new Azerbaijan. She still believes she is, ‘doing her duty’. We are shown another octogenarian who has worked for forty years on the gas separator. A native of Siberia, she graduated from the Moscow Institute of Energy and took a job at sea for the money. We see her praising the tropical summers as she tends to her plants amongst the decaying concrete and rusting pipes. We follow her back to the workers apartment block. It is nothing short of horrific, a decaying edifice, visibly rotting. ‘We want for nothing’ she says, without a trace of irony, ‘we have all modern conveniences’. As you watch you feel sad for their naivety. She takes the bus and tells us she can not cope with the big city, with its noise and traffic, explaining how she needs help crossing the road. 21st Century Baku is like Dubai on steroids.
We see another worker with his comrades. This time a native Azeri, who explains he is ex-military and only working for his children’s future, he doesn’t know how to do anything else. Their jolly, make the best of things, demeanour is touching in the decrepit surroundings. We see our ex-soldier go for a shower in the basement, right next to where tomorrow’s canteen food is being made. We never get to see the glorious new presidential refurbishment, the film only shows the painstaking application of a fire exit sticker by the site artist.
The film ends with a stark warning. Within 20 years the Azerbaijan Oil wells will run dry. The lack of planning from the present regime for the life of the site is not likely to change anytime soon and the fate of Oil Rocks is likely to be a dark one. It might well find itself sliding in to the Caspian waters leaving an environmental legacy the neither the Azeris nor their Caspian neighbours will be able to deal with. Until then the biggest oil production facility in the world remains suspended in time. Ticking slowly.
As a piece of industrial history the Oil Rocks, or Neft Daslari in Azeri, is very special. It was the world’s first off-shore platform. However it is not just a platform, more like a functioning town. At its peak there were some 190 miles of roadway constructed on piles above the sea. There are multi story apartment blocks to house the workers, football pitches, shops and cultural facilities. It is located about 100km from Baku itself and 45km from the nearest shore. If you have seen The World Is Not Enough, you’ll know what it looks like on fire.
It was an industrial site of huge significance for the Soviet Union, Khrushchev even bothered to visit, which was a rarity. Its image was used in countless propaganda films, celebrating the efforts of The Workers at sea. Today it continues to be key to the modern day independent Azerbaijani state, for good and for bad.
Stalin ordered the construction of the site in 1949. He personally knew the vast potential oil reserves in the Caspian Sea from his time as a worker in Baku. He also understood that oil was needed for the survival of the Soviet Project, a potent symbol of superiority over the West. This was only half the picture. Oil Rocks came with a human and environmental cost. The conditions in the Caspian Sea are often harsh and stormy. As one former manager from the film puts it, ‘when a man is up against the sea then he has no chance’. In November 1957 many died trying to repair the pipelines during severe storms. The total number of deaths over the years on the site is unknown, neither the Soviets nor the Azeris are too hot on publishing records. Similarly so, the Caspian Sea is one of the most polluted bodies of water on the planet. Environmental controls were, and continue to be, very lax. When I was in Baku you can smell the oil in the air from the city and by the waters edge you can see the pools of floating oil sludge on the surface. Azerbaijan is estimated to be the most heavily contaminated and polluted of all the former Soviet states, with over 30,000 hectares of petroleum contaminated soil. The entire coastline of the Abershon Penninsula is unfit for swimming and coastal development and there is even a shortage of safe drinking water.
Oil Rocks celebrated its 60th birthday in 2009 and Marc Wolfsenburger of the Swiss filmmakers, Thinline Documentaries, was there. His documentary played at numerous international film festivals. It also won a handful of environmental awareness awards for drawing attention to the state of the crumbling infrastructure and the sites uncertain future. This is probably not what the Azerbaijani State Oil giants, SOCAR, had in mind when they allowed the Thinline team the access they did. The Azeri oil company, worth some $20 billion, was close to completing a refurbishment to, amongst other things, allow each worker a toilet of their own. The refurbishment was described as a gift from the President to reward the workers. Everything in Azerbaijan is described as a gift from the President, including corruption, massive human rights violations, embezzlement and surely the ultimate wastage of one of the most valuable natural resources sites on the planet.
Wolfsenburger’s film doesn’t quite go as far as to state any of this, neither does it need to. Thinline have a mixed portfolio of work. Wolfsenburger is currently working on a project highlighting Alzheimers issues, and since La Citi Du Petrole was released he has been filming projects in Saudi Arabia and North Korea. None of these projects are normal, they are all controversial, yet La Citi Du Petrole makes no overt political statement or moral aspersion on the Azerbaijani state. It merely shows the human side of a very inhuman business. If this is what he does with his work in North Korea and Saudi Arabia then it will be interesting to see the results.
Despite the various environmental awards, his film has a real and touching human angle. His characters are the long time residents on the platforms. They seem almost timeless, like Soviet throwbacks, unaware of the fall of the iron curtain. There is one old lady who has been a worker there since she was in her 20s, she is now in her 80s and despite years of life at sea she is as alert and clear as someone decades younger. She declares she went because, ‘I will go where The Party needs me to go’. Her enduring loyalty to the system and belief in power of The Worker means she could never exist in the new Azerbaijan. She still believes she is, ‘doing her duty’. We are shown another octogenarian who has worked for forty years on the gas separator. A native of Siberia, she graduated from the Moscow Institute of Energy and took a job at sea for the money. We see her praising the tropical summers as she tends to her plants amongst the decaying concrete and rusting pipes. We follow her back to the workers apartment block. It is nothing short of horrific, a decaying edifice, visibly rotting. ‘We want for nothing’ she says, without a trace of irony, ‘we have all modern conveniences’. As you watch you feel sad for their naivety. She takes the bus and tells us she can not cope with the big city, with its noise and traffic, explaining how she needs help crossing the road. 21st Century Baku is like Dubai on steroids.
We see another worker with his comrades. This time a native Azeri, who explains he is ex-military and only working for his children’s future, he doesn’t know how to do anything else. Their jolly, make the best of things, demeanour is touching in the decrepit surroundings. We see our ex-soldier go for a shower in the basement, right next to where tomorrow’s canteen food is being made. We never get to see the glorious new presidential refurbishment, the film only shows the painstaking application of a fire exit sticker by the site artist.
The film ends with a stark warning. Within 20 years the Azerbaijan Oil wells will run dry. The lack of planning from the present regime for the life of the site is not likely to change anytime soon and the fate of Oil Rocks is likely to be a dark one. It might well find itself sliding in to the Caspian waters leaving an environmental legacy the neither the Azeris nor their Caspian neighbours will be able to deal with. Until then the biggest oil production facility in the world remains suspended in time. Ticking slowly.
