Page:The Boy Travellers in the Russian Empire.djvu/428

422 of the wells have a diameter of twenty inches. Oil is found at a depth of from three hundred to eight hundred feet. Every year the shallow wells are exhausted, and new borings are made to greater depths; they are nearly always successful, and therefore, though the petroleum field around Balakhani is very large, the oil speculators show no disposition to go far from the original site. To do so would require a large outlay for



pipe-lines, or other means of transporting the product, and as long as the old spot holds out they prefer to stick to it.

"Our guide said there were about five hundred wells at Balakhani; there are twenty-five thousand wells in America, but it is claimed that they do not yield as much oil in the aggregate as the wells in this region.

"From the wells the oil is conducted into reservoirs, which are nothing more than pits dug in the earth, or natural depressions with banks of sand raised around them. Here the sand in the oil is allowed to settle; when it has become clear enough for use the crude petroleum is pumped into iron tanks, and then into the pipe-lines that carry it to the refineries in Chorney Gorod.

"Some of the ponds of oil are large enough to be called lakes, and there are great numbers of them scattered over the ground of Balakhani.