№ 5 (49), 2011 - KazEnergy

portunity swiftly. The license's expiring datedrew near, and so it was a matter of utmosturgency to make sure that the supervisionover further exploration was to be put intothe hands of a group that had sufficient capital,personnel and equipment at its disposition.""Mr. Five-Percent"It was at this stage where a company consistingof quite familiar names from the ranks ofthe Royal Dutch, popped up. The most respectableone was that of the son of the company'sfounding father Jan-Baptist AugustKessler, while the most notorious one wasthat of Calouste Gulbenkian's, the Arme-On the world's oil mapFrederick LaneThe Ural Caspian was meant to serve as acounterforce to Nobel's Emba Kaspiisky,and in the records of Royal Dutch and Nobelboth claim the honour of having developedthe fields of Dossor and Makat, both situatedhalfway the Emba and Ural rivers. In spiteof numerous appraisal drilling operationselsewhere in the area, including the southbank of the Emba, those two fields remainedthe only productive ones on the eve of theRussian Revolutions.Both companies' annals are contradictory,since up to this very day both claim to havebeen the license holder for the Dossor field.For what it mattered - since the intervennianmerchant son from Istanbul known asthe Royal Dutch moth or "Mr. Five-Percent".Inevitable was the name of Henry Deterding,Kessler Sr.'s successor and known asthe Napoleon of the oil business."The only ones who could provide this onshort notice was 'Exchange Chambers', 24& 28, St. Mary Axe, where Deterding andhis staff, to which now also Kessler's eldestson G.A. Kessler belonged, were at the steeringwheel of the affairs of the Koninklijkegroup," Gerretson relates. "Arm-in-arm withthe 'big brokers', one knocked on the doorhere and also this time not in vain. On June12 1911, an agreement was inked between'Ural Caspian' and a syndicate that consistedof Deterding, Gulbenkian, Lane and VonOfenheim. Within the agreement, the capitalof the British company was increased to1,000,000 pound Sterling.”tions of western oil companies wasdisrupted by the October Revolution.Attempts to get propertyrights back failed, but the RoyalDutch through the joint efforts ofDeterding, Gulbenkian and Krassinmanaged to compensate for theloss in purchasing contracts at considerablediscounts. As for Kazakhstan,the developments of the lateXIXth and early XXth Centurieshad put the country on the world'soil map once and for all.Emba field in Soviet timesKAZENERGY59