489 
Baku Archipelago about 60 kilometers south of Baku. The test flow 
on the discovery well, prolific by Caspian standards, was about 1,825 
barrels of oil per day plus 10.6 million cubic feet of gas per day 
from a depth of 4,785 meters.*® Garasu was the Soviet’s 20th Caspian 
field and the fifth marine discovery made by the Russians in less 
than 12 months. The other 15 fields were found over a 50-year 
period which followed the initial offshore discovery in very shallow 
water near Baku in 1923. Two new pools were discovered in the 
Baku Archipelago in 1974, one a gas-condensate discovery at Bulla- 
More and the other an oil find at Duvannyi-More, both to the north 
of Garasu. The Baku Archipelago now has five fields, the first, San- 
gachaly-More, was found in 1963. The Soviets feel that the Garasu 
find makes it almost certain that the oil and gas reserves in the 
petroliferous area south of the Apsheron Peninsula in the Baku 
Archipelago will far exceed those likely to be found elsewhere in 
the Caspian Sea.?? 
Exploration in the Baku Archipelago area is now concenirated on 
the deep drilling of two areas south and southeast of Garasu. Both 
are regions of extremely complex geology and thus far hydrocarbons 
have apparently not been found in commercial quantity. 
Farther north along the west shore of the Caspian, the second 
well drilled from the jack-up Apsheron at Inchkhe-More off Daghestan 
tested at 5.5 million cubic feet of gas per day and 2,000 barrels 
of oil per day. The field is currently being developed from a fixed 
drilling platform.” 
Along the east coast of the Caspian Sea (offshore Turkmenistan 
and Kazakhstan) exploratory and appraisal drilling is continuing. 
Drilling off the Turkmenistan coast is accomplished from fixed plat- 
forms, sand banks, or using the Dutch built jack-up Khazar. Develop- 
ment of the Zhdanov Bank and Lam Bank fields is continuing and 
a new well in the East Livanov Bank gas field tested 875 barrels 
of oil per day from about 4,350 meters.** 
Zhdanov Bank, discovered in 1967, is the only entirely offshore 
Turkmenistan field in production. Lam Bank field, located west of 
the Cheleken Peninsula, has been shut in since its discovery in 1972. 
The first job assigned to the new $14.5 million Dutch-built pipelaying 
barge, Suleiman Vezirov, scheduled to have begun trial operations 
in October 1975, is to lay a 10-kilometer line from Lam Bank to 
Zhdanov Bank. After completing the Lam Bank to Zhdanov Bank 
link, the Suleiman Vezirov may be used to lay pipelines to two other 
shut-in gas-condensate fields off the Turkmenistan Cheleken Peninsula, 
Gubkin Bank and Livanov Bank both discovered in 1973.** 
In 1975 the Soviet Union plans to increase offshore Caspian Sea 
drilling by 24,000 meters and to put 83 new wells on production. 
Overall Russian offshore drilling is believed to be close to 360,000 
meters per year. During the 1976 to 1980 period, Caspian drilling 
plans call for a 50 to 100 percent increase as compared to 1971 
3° Ibid. 
31 Bakke, Donald R. Deeper Drilling Pays Off for Soviets. Offshore, December 1974, p. 173. 
32 Rigassi, Danilo A., op. cit., p. 122. 
33 Ibid. 
34 Russia to Tap East Caspian Gas Fields, The Oil and Gas Journal, October 13, 1975, p. 45. 
