Oil Rocks: City Above the Sea

Running time: 54 mins

In the middle of the Caspian Sea lies perhaps the strangest city on earth.

Not only the first offshore oil town ever built at sea, it is also the biggest ? and still operating! Commissioned by Stalin in 1949 to feed Russia?s post-war oil hunger, this incredible construction, a six-hour boat ride from shore, its 2000 oil wells connected by an amazing 300 km labyrinth of bridged elevated roadways, sits isolated from the rest of the world, frozen in time. With some of its original inhabitants still living there, it endures, like some dilapidated ghost from another world fighting the pounding relentless sea and the ravages of time. Both miracle and nightmare, it is absolutely unlike anything you have ever seen before.

- Charlie Cockey