- Project Runeberg -  Armenia and the Near East /
55

(1928) [MARC] Author: Fridtjof Nansen - Tema: Russia
Table of Contents / Innehåll | << Previous | Next >>
  Project Runeberg | Catalog | Recent Changes | Donate | Comments? |   

Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - III. Batum to Tiflis

scanned image

<< prev. page << föreg. sida <<     >> nästa sida >> next page >>


Below is the raw OCR text from the above scanned image. Do you see an error? Proofread the page now!
Här nedan syns maskintolkade texten från faksimilbilden ovan. Ser du något fel? Korrekturläs sidan nu!

This page has never been proofread. / Denna sida har aldrig korrekturlästs.

BATUM TO TIFLIS 55
This pipe-line, which runs along the railway for the whole
distance, is nearly 900 kilometres long ; it rises from the
Caspian Sea, the surface of which is 26 metres below the
level of the ocean, to a height of 9 5 o metres above it, and then
descends again to the Black Sea. The oil has to be raised
by a series of pumping stations on the way. Only refined
petroleum can pass through the pipe-line, for the crude oil
runs too slowly and would soon clog and stop up the pipe.
At the terminus the petroleum is pumped up into the big
tanks. Besides this, long railway trains come to Batum every
day with big tank-wagons full of crude oil and other kinds
of oil, which are subjected to various processes and refined
before being stored in the large tanks. From these latter the
different sorts of oil—there are some twenty odd kinds—are
conducted by special pipes down to the harbour and thence
by huge hose-pipes into the tanks of the ships, which are
quickly loaded.
The engineer told me that more oil was being obtained in
the Baku region than before the war. I objected that as late
as last year the production had not been much more than
half of what it was previously, but he explained that it had
doubled since last year owing to the large number of new
wells which had been sunk. From other sources I received
information which confirmed the fact that the production had
really risen considerably over the pre-war average, though
the latest statistics I have seen put the whole production
(in 1925) at 90 per cent. of the yield before the war.
During the recent exceptionally cold winter such an enor
mous quantity of snow had fallen in this damp climate that
its weight had crushed in the tops of the petroleum tanks, and
those which had not yet been repaired looked sadly out of
shape, like battered tin cans.
At one o’clock, or as much after that hour as is considered
proper in this fortunate part of the world where time is not
in a hurry, there was a grand lunch with a characteristic
Russian menu. First sakuska (cold dishes) with quantities
annually. Baedeker, published before the war, says that
70 million poods of oil flow through the pipe-line in the course
of a year. There would seem to be a mistake somewhere.

<< prev. page << föreg. sida <<     >> nästa sida >> next page >>


Project Runeberg, Sat Dec 9 02:57:48 2023 (aronsson) (download) << Previous Next >>
https://runeberg.org/armenia/0063.html

Valid HTML 4.0! All our files are DRM-free