Although commercial oil production only began in the second half of the nineteenth century, for centuries oil was gathered by peoples who lived in parts of the world where it seeped to the surface. In Russia, the first written mention of the gathering of oil appeared in the sixteenth century. Travelers described how tribes living along the banks of the river Ukhta in the far northern Timan Pechora region gathered oil from the surface of the river and used it as a medicine and a lubricant. Oil gathered from the Ukhta river was delivered to Moscow for the first time in 1597.

In 1702, Tsar Peter the First ordered the setting up of Russia's first regular newspaper, Vedomosti. The paper's first issue carried a story about the discovery of oil on the surface of the river Sok in central Russia, while later issues carried similar stories about oil seeps elsewhere in Russia. In 1745, Feodor Pryadunov received permission to begin gathering oil seeping from the bed of the river Ukhta. Pryadunov also built a primitive refinery, delivering some of the products to Moscow and St Petersburg.

Oil seeps had also been reported in the North Caucasus by various travelers who passing through the region. Local people even gathered the oil using buckets to haul it up from wells up to one and a half metres deep. In 1823, the Dubinin brothers opened a refinery in Mozdok to process oil gathered from the nearby Voznesensk oilfield.

Oil and gas seeps were recorded in Baku on the Western shores of the Caspian Sea by an Arab traveler and historian as early as the tenth century. Marco Polo later wrote how people in Baku used oil for medicinal purposes and to administer blessings. By the fourteenth century, oil gathered in Baku was already being exported to other countries of the Middle East. The first oil well in the world was drilled at Bibi-Aybat near Baku in 1846, more than a decade before the drilling of the first well in the US. This event marked the birth of the modern-day oil industry.

The Baku region harbored many large fields which were very relatively easy to exploit, but transporting the oil to market was difficult and expensive. The Nobel brothers and the Rothschild family played a major role in the development of the oil industry in Baku, which was at that time part of the Russian Empire. The industry grew rapidly, and by the turn of the century Russia accounted for over 30% of world oil production. Shell Transport & Trading, which later became part of Royal Dutch/Shell, began life by ferrying oil produced by the Rothschilds to Western Europe.

In the second half of the nineteenth century, Russia also began to discover oil fields in other parts of the country. In 1864, a well drilled in Krasnodar Krai produced the first gusher. Four years later, the first oil well was drilled on the banks of the river Ukhta, while 1876 saw the start of commercial production on the Cheleken peninsula in present-day Turkmenistan. The rapid development of oil production was accompanied by the construction of various plants for processing crude oil, with a lubricants plant opening in 1879 near Yaroslavl and a similar facility opening the same year in Nizhny Novgorod.

Oil production suffered as a result of the Russian revolution in 1917, and the situation worsened with nationalization of the oil fields by the Communists in 1920. The Nobels sold a significant part of their Russian holdings to Standard Oil of New Jersey, which was later to become Exxon. Standard Oil protested the decision to nationalize the oil fields and refused to cooperate with the new Soviet government. But other companies, including Vacuum and Standard Oil of New York, which was later to become Mobil, invested in Russia. The continued inflow of Western funds helped Russian oil production to recover, and by 1923 oil exports had climbed back to their pre-revolutionary levels.

Вариант III

1. Перепишите и переведите на русский язык следующие предложения, обращая внимание на сложные формы инфинитива (см. образец выполнения № 1).

1. I am glad to have finished the work in time.

2. He likes to be working at this problem.

3. More oil reserves are to be discovered in East Siberia.

4. You have to be prepared to look after a car that will need a lot of maintenance.

5. People fear not being able to look after themselves and being a burden on others.

6. Whether art scholars can come to an agreement on the subject remains to be seen.

7. It remains to be seen how long they will accept taxation without representation.

2. Перепишите и переведите на русский язык следующие предложения. Помните, что объектный и субъектный инфинитивные обороты соответствуют придаточным предложениям (см. образец выполнения № 2).

1. We know a laser to be a device that stimulates the electrons of a light-producing material to vibrate simultaneously.

2. Lasers are known to have found an application in the printing industry.

3. Light waves are now believed to be due to the motions of electrons themselves within the atoms.

4. Chemical investigations have shown each element to combine with another only in definite proportions.

5. We know Pascal to be the first inventor of the mechanical computer.

6. Wood is unlikely to be used in rockets that fly from planet to planet.

7. Another factor to be considered is that we use a vegetable fibre.

3. Перепишите и переведите следующие предложения, содержащие придаточные условия. Определите тип условного предложения (см. образец выполнения № 3).

1. If the scientists applied the new method they would get a different result.

2. If the checking up of the experimental data had not taken so much time, we should have completed our work long ago.

3. If I spend a whole day at my report, it will be ready by Friday.

4. We’ll discuss this problem when we meet next time.

5. You will get good results if you apply this method of calculation.

6. If you press the button, the device will start working.