Oil Field in Ex-Soviet Union to Get U.S. Help in Updating

A Bakersfield consulting company is facing an unusual challenge in developing oil fields in a part of the former Soviet Union that “looks like a picture out of the 1940s.”

The technology that had been used to extract oil in Kazakhstan also appears to be from the 1940s, said Bob B. Blalock, vice president of WZI Inc.

WZI has entered a joint venture to help the fledgling nation leap from the 1940s to the 1990s in its Moldabek and Kotyrtas oil fields just north of the Caspian Sea. The company will send people to teach Kazakhs how to drill with U.S. equipment.

“It’s a chance to develop a sizable oil field from the ground up, with everything state of the art,” said WZI President Mary Jane Wilson. “When it’s fully developed, it’ll be slightly smaller than Kern River.”

The Kern River field in the southern San Joaquin Valley has produced more than 1 billion barrels of crude oil and could eventually become this nation’s fifth field to produce 2 billion barrels.

Blalock said several fields were discovered in Kazakhstan during the days of the Soviet Union, but development was meager.

“It’s a major oil-producing area, one of the last undeveloped regions in the world,” Blalock said.

Experience with and expertise in oil matters hasn’t helped overcome some of the hurdles WZI’s people can expect.

“There are major cultural differences,” Wilson said. “We’ve had to explain the free market. We’re trying to explain incentive. It’s been hurdles like that. It’s like you’re opening their eyes to free enterprise.”

Americans involved with the project are trying to learn Russian, and some of the Kazakhs speak English.

A group of Kazakhs visited Kern County recently to get an idea of what their oil fields will be like after the change.

“It was a real eye-opener for these people to see what a truly developed oil field looks like,” Blalock said.