Ekibastuz is a town in Pavlodar Province, northeastern Kazakhstan. It has a population of 127,200 (1999 census). It is served by Ekibastuz Airport. Near Ekibastuz there are two coal fired power plants: GRES-1, with installed capacity of 4000 megawatts, and GRES-2, with an installed capacity of 1000 megawatts. GRES-2 has the tallest chimney in the world (419.7 meters). From Ekibastuz to Kokshetau runs an overhead powerline designed for a transmission voltage of 1150 kV, the Ekibastuz-Kokshetau powerline. The history of Ekibastuz begins in the 19th century, when Kosym Pshembayev, a native Kazakh who was commissioned by Russian merchants to look for mineral resources in that region, alighted on a coal field south-east of Pavlodar. He marked the place with two big lumps of salt. This identification gave the place its name: "Ekibastuz" means "two lumps of the salt" in Kazakh. The commercial exploitation of the field started soon after. The field afterwards was sold to a British businessman named Urquart. The railway connection was constructed and the village "Ekibastuz" was established in 1899.
The revolution in the Russian Empire, as well as two World Wars distracted the attention of the state from the exploitation of the field. The village was totally deserted. However, in 1948 the first team (only 50 people) started construction of the future town. The borders of the future open-cast coal fields were also marked at that time. December of 1954 was a significant period for Ekibastuz, because the first train loads of coal were loaded. From that time the industrial development of Ekibastuz started. In 1955 the millionth ton of the coal was produced. The status of the "town" was given to Ekibastuz on July 12, 1957 by a decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Kazakh Soviet Socialist Republic. At that time the population of Ekibastuz was approximately 25,000 people. Nowadays, the population of Ekibastuz is about 130,000 people. Today Ekibastuz is the biggest open-cast coal field and one of the most perspective open-cast coal regions in the world. It contains more than 13 billion tons of coal in the area of 62 square kilometers. In other words, there are 74 million tons of coal per square kilometer.
Gulag
It was the location of a major labor camp of the Gulag system maintained by the Soviet Union from the 1920s to the 1950s. Alexander Solzhenitsyn served in this camp.
See also
- Kengir, a related camp and site of uprising partly supported by prisoners from Ekibastuz.
References
