The word "pioneer" is often used to refer to Ignaty Brod. Among his achievements are the creation of a revolutionary doctrine of oil and gas bearing basins, the organization of specialized departments in major domestic universities, and the discovery of dozens of hydrocarbon fields in the North Caucasus and Dagestan. He received the award that kept him alive for the discovery of the Archedinskoye field in Volgograd Oblast. It was from there that the first batches of gas were sent through the trunk pipeline to the war-ravaged Stalingrad.
"Forgotten" Story
Information about the repressions of the 1930s and 1940s with regard to many famous people is often concealed. Situations in which a scientist or an expert ended up in the camps, and then a year or two later was again in a high position were common at the time. Therefore, historians sometimes excluded these "years of oblivion" from the official biography. One cannot read about the arrest of Ignaty Brod in Wikipedia, numerous encyclopedias, or scientific journals. However, rare gleanings of this event can be found in the memoirs of the geologist's friends and students. The son of Soviet artist Alexander Zhitomirsky, who was on friendly terms with the scientist, states that "he was arrested, accused of God knows what sins and it is good that he was not shot, as many of his colleagues were, but only sent to a camp.
"One day on the wall of a boarded-up barrack he happened to see a scrap of newspaper on a nail. And there it said: "For the discovery and exploration of the gas and oil field, to award the Stalin Prize of the second degree for 1949". And he, Ignaty Osipovich Brod, is among the laureates. He presented this "document" to his camp counselor. In the end, the case was reviewed, and the "saboteur" was allowed to return to his professional - and professor's - duties... Important to note: Ignaty Brod is one of those to whom our entire country owes its economic - if not prosperity - level achieved. He was not only the discoverer of fields, but also a leading theorist in the field of prospective studies of potential oil and gas fields. He is the author of more than three hundred scientific publications and several inventions, trained a whole pleiad of major specialists, thanks to whom the production of hydrocarbons still forms the basis of our economy today," writes Vladimir Zhitomirsky.
The oil worker was under investigation for about eight months. At that time, quite a few members of the scientific and pedagogical intelligentsia and student youth were arrested and shot on charges of participation in some mass "Japanese Trotskyist subversive, sabotage organization uncovered in the oil industry." One can only guess how the oil and gas industry would have developed if Brod had not noticed the wall newspaper attached by the guards to entertain the convicts...
Ignaty Osipovich was born in Saratov in 1902 into the family of a doctor at a Zemstvo hospital. Because of the early death of his father in 1917, the young man had to leave school and take a job in the engine shop of the 2nd aviation regiment of the Red Army.
It was not until 1921 that he enrolled at the Leningrad Mining Institute, where he finally had the opportunity to plunge into education. The financial issue was still relevant to the young man. So every summer Ignaty worked as a part-time collector for geological and exploration parties of the Geological Committee, and every winter as a lecturer from the Unions of Mining Workers and Chemists at the Leningrad factories and peat mines.
Practical Geologist
The geological committee discerned potential in a talented student and even before he graduated, it offered him a position as head of an oil exploration party in South Dagestan. In 1928, the graduate officially became a mining engineer. In 1930 he worked as a consultant on deep drilling of Soyuzneft in all areas of Dagestan, and in 1933 he was the manager of Groznefteprospecting and chief geologist of Grozneftecombinat. A couple of years later he became chief geologist of "Dagneft" trust. All prospecting and exploratory works on oil, gas and iodine-bromine waters in Dagestan and other regions of Eastern Ciscaucasia were carried out under his supervision. Brod, who has just turned 30, became one of the leading experts on oil and gas fields of the Caucasus.
Popularizer
Surprisingly, Ignaty Osipovich managed not only to be successfully engaged in practical geology, but also to find time to popularize education and fundamental science. He remained to teach at his alma mater and soon enough came to the idea of the necessity to organize and develop oil and gas geology departments in the leading universities of the country. The gas industry in the USSR was only beginning to develop and Brod clearly understood the importance of natural and associated gas for the national economy. Exploratory drilling in the areas recommended by him in Dagestan led to the discovery of several deposits, which were immediately put into development. Scientific dialogue, academic exchange and joint research projects were necessary for the full development of the industry. But how to achieve this, if only representatives of the Leningrad Mining In were engaged in targeted hydrocarbons?!
It was his goal to establish a major discipline in large institutions of higher education. His native university, with which he did not lose contact until his last days, was taken as an example.
In 1934-1939 Brod was head of department of geology and exploration of oil and gas fields of Grozny Oil Institute.
During the war years, he was head of the geological section of the Scientific and Technical Council of Glavgaztopprom (Main Directorate of Gas Industry and Artificial Liquid Fuel under the USSR Council of People's Commissars), simultaneously developing oil and gas geology at the next educational institution.
From 1942 to 1947 he was Head of Department of Oil and Gas Fields Geology at Moscow Oil Institute named after Ivan Gubkin.
In 1944 Ignaty Osipovich founded and headed till 1962 the Chair of Geology and Geochemistry of Natural Gas at the Mikhail Lomonosov MSU Faculty of Geology (since 1953 - Chair of Geology and Geochemistry of Combustible Minerals). The unique organizational abilities of the mining engineer were appreciated by the management of the university, and he was offered to become the Vice-Rector for Construction and supervise the entire construction process during the construction of the Main Building of the University on Sparrow Hills.
Scientist
Nevertheless, Brod always gave priority to scientific work. Problems of hydrocarbon origin, formation of oil and gas deposits, classification and discovery of deposit distribution patterns, local and regional forecasting, methods of prospecting and exploration of deposits - these are only the main topics of his research.
Back in 1947, he formulated the basic law of oil and gas formation and oil and gas accumulation. The dominant role in it is played by tectonic sagging accompanied by powerful sedimentation in the process of generation and accumulation of oil and gas. The predominance of downward tectonic movements of a particular section of the Earth's crust against the background of a general oscillatory process provides the emergence and interaction of all private factors of generation and accumulation of hydrocarbons.
The second most important achievement of Brod in the field of theoretical oil and gas geology was the doctrine of oil and gas bearing basins. In his opinion, any oil-and-gas-bearing regions are naturally associated with sagging areas in the modern structure of the Earth's crust, formed by sufficiently thick strata of sedimentary rocks, in other words, with sedimentary basins. In the course of evolution they can become oil and gas bearing. The scientist considered them as the main elements of the oil and geological zoning. The term itself was not coined by Ignaty Osipovich, but it was he who linked together the processes of sagging and sedimentation with the processes of generation, migration, and accumulation of oil and gas, giving the basins a tectonic and geodynamic sense, creating a coherent doctrine of them and developing the first versions of their classification.
Another major merit of Brod is the creation of a general systematics of oil and gas accumulations and oil-and-gas-bearing territories.
As Nikolai Yeremenko, Director of the Institute of Geology and Exploitation of Combustible Mineral Resources of the USSR Academy of Sciences, wrote, "Ignaty Osipovich was needed by science at least in order to sort out a bunch of scientific positions, sometimes misconceptions and simply illiterate statements. And he turned out to be spot on."
The petroleum geologist attached great importance to the accuracy of concepts and definitions. Many of his terms became generally accepted. For example, he introduced into petroleum geology the concept of natural reservoirs and traps. For the first time in the entire world geological literature such provisions as deposit, field, oil and gas accumulation zone, oil and gas bearing basin, province and oil and gas bearing belt were brought into a single interconnected system. He developed classifications for the main members of this taxonomic series.
Ignaty Osipovich published his works "Fundamentals of Oil and Gas Geology" and "Search and Exploration of Oil and Gas Fields", which became handy for university teachers, students, and geology practitioners in Russia and abroad.
In the 1930s-80s, the Soviet Union was rapidly developing geosciences, including geology, tectonics and petroleum geology. The country needed large amounts of oil. Teams of scientists in large complex expeditions numbering up to several hundred people were created. Especially large was the Complex North Caucasus Oil and Gas Expedition of the USSR Academy of Sciences, created in 1952. In 1956, it was reorganized into the Complex Southern Geological Expedition (CSGE) comprising Western Turkmenistan, and in 1961 - into the Research Laboratory of Geological Criteria for Evaluation of Perspectives of Oil and Gas Reservoirs in the RSFSR Head Geology Department. Ignaty Brod acted as director and scientific supervisor of the expedition and then of the laboratory.
On the basis of the doctrine of oil and gas bearing basins he formulated the tasks of possible oil and gas production from Mesozoic deposits. Under the guidance of the scientist in a short time a colossal work was carried out to summarize all available geological data received by Moscow, Leningrad and North Caucasus organizations, and on their basis a series of specialized geological maps and general plan of oil and gas exploration in the North-Eastern Caucasus and Pre-Caucasus region were created.
The work resulted in the discovery of a group of fields in Duzlak, Bekerei, Dagogni, Khoshmenzil, Benoi, Seli, Gasha, Russky Khutor, Sukhokumsk, South Sukhokumsk in Dagestan and Karabulak, Achaluki, Zamankul, Malgobek in Chechen-Ingushetia and Ozek-Suat, Winter Stavka and Velichaevka in Stavropol Territory. The discovery of oil demonstrated the unique scientific foresight that Ignaty Osipovich possessed.
Brod died two months before his sixtieth birthday in 1962. The methodology he developed formed the basis for the compilation of atlases of oil bearing capacity and hydrocarbon reserves and resources development prospects for most regions of the USSR.
