The present Republic of Macedonia hold enormous natural resources with incomprehensible value. From the old editions of “Sluzben Vesnik” we can read that a decade after the Second World War, the government had specific funds for oil research. In the decades later, the first official research for oil in Macedonia happened in the region of Ovche Pole, but the official results were never published…
“Nova Makedonija” announced that the gas explosion caused by the “Nafta Gas” drill occurred on February 2 at around 10 am. In the text published on February 5, it is written that at a depth of only 470 meters, a strong explosion of gas erupted with the appearance of oil, which, as it says, could be seen even the villages around…
“We barely managed to stop the strong eruption of oil and gas. If we failed, the worst could happen. Now the eruption, as you can see, is tamed and it will be released when preparations are made for it…”
Is there oil in Macedonia or not? This topic has been debated and written about for more than half a century. The dilemma has been going on since 1968, when a Naftagas team from Novi Sad came to the Ovche Pole plain and started looking for black gold. The drillers of this company, under the warm sun of Ovche Pole region, in the atar of the village of Erdzelija, worked in two places. On the first one they reached 1,755 meters, on the other they penetrated into the bowels of the earth up to 1,925 meters. The journalists from those times remember well that a black liquid first gushed out of one of the holes, and then gas came out, which burned like a beacon over the sleeping plain for several months. It was an occasion for dozens of journalistic teams from all over Yugoslavia at that time to come to Ovche Pole to introduce the public to the great discovery. But somehow unannounced, almost overnight, the oil prospectors packed their equipment and left Macedonia after previously sealing the wells, which still stand today undamaged by time and bear witness to a hope that quickly appeared and even more quickly left in the history of the great our mysteries.
ACCESS STRICTLY PROHIBITED – Vasilie Ristovski from Erdzelija still vividly remembers the time when the fever for black gold lasted. In the sixties of the last century, he was the deputy director of DOO “Erdzelija” within the ZIK “Ovche Pole”. He was one of the few who had access to the strictly prohibited terrain where the drilling took place.
“They came from Novi Sad first from the management of the company. After talks in the municipality with the president at the time, the now deceased Dushko Gigovski, and with the general director of the combine, Angel Shumanski, they took us a field with an area of three hectares and paid for it three years in advance for the lost crop and for the profit expected by the combine. The team consisted of 25 to 30 people. I had the task of organizing the supply of technical water and drinking water for their daily needs. Before they started drilling, they distributed a map on which two routes were clearly drawn, the first was the Amzabegovo-Vrsakovo route, and the second was Knezje-Erdzelija-Sudik. First they did test drilling, and when they got to a hundred meters they put an explosive, so after the explosion, water leaked out of the hole. They said there was “living” water here, but that didn’t interest them. No one wanted to talk (or dare) about what was the subject of their interest, which was oil, but they were also people, so when they relaxed in the evening, they knew how to “let go” of some important information. One day they mentioned to me about some kind of oil-bearing route, that is, “daga” as they called it, which starts from Romania, passes through Macedonia and ends in Albania, and which had its branch in Ovche Pole regionn. That’s all I could find out from them, although they were very polite they didn’t want any information to come out of their mouths. Their operation was completed so that gas came out of one of the deeper wells, there was no oil”, asserts Vasilie Ristovski.
The oil prospectors from Novi Sad stayed on this terrain for about two years. Even today, it remains an enigma why they left the field, whether it was because they failed to find what they were looking for or because their mission was only to find out if there was oil or not, and to leave the economic exploitation for better times. After packing their machines, according to Ristovski, the people from “Naftagas” went to drill opposite Bashino Selo, but from there they quickly left for Pozarevac and some location in Montenegro.
In the sixties of the last century, the biggest sensation in the media was caused by the drilling of “Nafta Gas” workers from Novi Sad in 1969.
The strong eruption was caused by drilling, and oil and gas were brought to the surface of the Erdzelija hole on February 2, 1969. The news about oil strongly shook the Shtip and Sveti Nikole political establishment and the population. The mood began to turn into positive collective hysteria. It also excited the top political establishment in Belgrade. Therefore, even Lazar Kolishevski, who at that time was a member of the presidency of the Central Committee of the Union of Communists of Yugoslavia (SKJ) and a member of the Council of the Federation (a member of the highest leadership of the party), came to calm the situation, and to give instructions to local politicians, businessmen and party delegates.
Kolishevski was accompanied by high state and economic representatives during the visit to Sveti Nikole, which confirms that the event of February 2 strongly shook all the structures in the then federation. In the articles published on the front pages of “Nova Makedonija”, the testimonies of workers on the Erdzelija oil research platform were transmitted.
“The fertile Ovche Pole, one of the grain-producing regions, is well on its way to becoming the first oil-bearing field in Macedonia in the near future. After several months of research, the working unit of “Nafta gas” from Novi Sad, under the leadership of engineer Zoran Milovanovic, at the hole Ovche Pole 1, near the village of Erdzhelija, Sveti Nikole, came across the first layers of oil and gas” (Nova Macedonia, February 5, 1969 year).
“We barely managed to stop the strong eruption of oil and gas. If we failed, the worst could happen. Now the eruption, as you can see, is tamed and it will be released when preparations are made for it,” Rajko Mitrovic, leader of the hole shift and a worker from Nafta Gas, told us. This is a statement that “Nova Makedonija” published as the main news on the front page on February 5, 1969.
“Nova Makedonija” announced that the gas explosion caused by the “Nafta Gas” drill occurred on February 2 at around 10 am. In the text published on February 5, it is written that at a depth of only 470 meters, a strong explosion of gas erupted with the appearance of oil, which, as it says, could be seen even from Erdzelija.
But what happened – after only a few months of work, the workers of “Oil and Gas” left. The investigation was terminated. It has never been officially announced whether there might be oil there, although the Macedonian Parliament has allocated significant funds to continue exploration. And this is where the whole story about Ovche Pole oil was paused…
