OIL: Russian Wildcatting

What is the condition of Russia's oil industry? How much petroleum is being produced? This week Dr. Leonid P. Smirnov, former chief Arctic geologist for the Soviet Union, gives some of the answers in the Socony-Vacuum publication, The Flying Red Horse. As the top oil explorer in Russia from 1925 to 1942, Dr. Smirnov discovered the Arctic fields in the Taimyr-Lena area, and the rich Second Baku basin, which stretches from the Caspian Sea to the Arctic. But in 1949, disillusioned with Communism because "I saw what it was in practice and...

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