The history of oil in Russia is a well-established narrative that was initiated by the Nobel brothers, who in 1879 founded the Branobel company, soon to become the Russian largest oil-industry. This article suggests reflecting on the anniversary books that the Branobel published to celebrate their 25- and 30-year jubilees in 1904 and 1909, not long before their oil Empire was washed away by the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution. I analyze the narrative that the Nobels produced while forming grounds for the new world order that still floats today on the sticky waters of the ‘black gold,’ and that caused the crucial change in human-nature relations.

These relations have been recently challenged in search of a new means of sustainable existence that allow to drain the dependency on oil and establish a new world order for the sake of protecting nature from its own dangerous resources. Yet these efforts are far not limited to the development of the green renewable natural resources and require political, ideological, and cultural reconstruction of contemporary social and natural landscapes. Hence, the study of the origins of the oil history is essential to the analysis of the mechanisms behind oil’s rise from being merely a natural resource to a political and cultural legacy that identifies the world’s ‘superpowers,’ outlines their political ambitions, and conditions their ideologies.