THE XAPllTHA INDUiJTKY. 



25:3 



of kerosene fell rapidly to 30 and 40 kopecks per poud at Baku, and to 1 rouble at 

 Nizhni-Novgorod, owing to the great increase in the production and treatment of 

 naphtha; and its internal consumption increased so much, that is, to about twenty 

 million pouds per year, that all the factories, peasant huts, and streets throughout 

 Eussia began to use kerosene for light. At the same time the competition ot 

 many of the small, and several of the large firms, soon brought the production to 

 dimensions easily exceeding the home demand, which now does not use more than 

 tAventy-seven million pouds of kerosene a year; hence there arose an urgent necessity 

 for increasing the foreign export of naphtha products. Although it had long gone 

 along the lengthy route of the Caspian Sea, the Volga to Tsaritzin, and thence by rail 

 to the western frontier, still the transport by this route, notwithstanding all the 

 improvements and modes of economy, could not avoid raising the price of the oil. 

 and thus hinder its extension abroad. The true foreign trade in Baku naphtha starts 

 from the middle and even end of the eighties, when the Transcaucasian Eailway 

 was completed and its transporting capacity increased by the construction of the 

 Souram tunnel, and the introduction of a sufficient number of tank trucks. The fol- 

 lowing table gives the rise in the export of naphtha products abroad. 



YEARS. 



H;=: 



1881. 

 1882. 

 1883. 

 1884. 

 1885. 

 1886. 

 1887. 

 168S. 

 1889. 

 1890. 

 1891. 

 1892. 



The distribution among foreign countries is seen from the export of lighting- 

 oils for 1889 in the following table. 



* According to the customs estimate, for 27 million roubles, or on the average at 

 47 kopecks per poud. 



