Creating National Museum Of Ahwaz Oil Industry On The Agenda

The National Museum of Ahwaz Oil Industry will be established in near future, director of petroleum museums and documents center, Akbar Nematollahi, said.

Visiting historical places of Aghajari, Omidieh and Ahwaz cities in Khuzestan province, Nematollahi said during his visit he had the opportunity to examine the possibility of changing oil industry historical sites into petroleum museums.  

Accompanied by Dr. Kargar, director general of museums, historical and cultural moveable properties at the Cultural Heritage, Handicrafts And Tourism Organization, he further noted: during my visit to the cities, I reached the conclusion that an old hospital, a training center and the first fuel supply center of Omidieh as well as a technical-vocational school and an old building named Khoram-koshk in Ahwaz have enough potentials for further examinations and changing into petroleum museums.  

According to the petroleum museums and documents center website, Nematollah held very fruitful discussions with the managing director of the National Iranian South Oil Company (NISOC) regarding these developments and getting start the process.

NISOC’s managing director, Bijan Aalipour, in his turn, expressed his readiness for cooperation with the petroleum museums and documents center in order to achieve its objective regarding expanding petroleum museums, noting building petroleum museums in Aghajari, Omidieh and Ahwaz will be honorable for these oil-rich cites of Khozestan Province.

Meanwhile, Dr. Kargar stated that petroleum museums act like corridors connecting Iranian oil industry to people and help the oil industry to preserve the things and objects that could have been vanished otherwise.

It is worth mentioning that Omidieh’s training center was established 60 years ago, teaching skills like casting, carpentry, instrumentation, mechanics, electricity and lathe.

Also, the old hospital of the city was built 57 years ago in 1961. It was built for the treatment of the oil industry personnel but now it is an abandoned building with a number of old medical equipment inside. Dr. Ganji, Dr. Sing as physician and Ms. Ravel as a nurse were among the well-known characters of the hospital.   

Similarly, the first gas station of the city was built in early years of 1960s.

An industrial institute in Ahwaz, which is being used as a training center by the National Iranian South Oil Company, was built in 1962 and started its activities a year later by holding technical courses for 30 trainees.

Abadan Apprentice Museum Ready For Official Inauguration

By: Ahmad Kabi Fallahie

During the hot days of summer in southwest of Iran, Khuzestan province, the museums and cultural centers are often involved in planning to resume their activities during the next seasons, when the weather is moderate; the head of Abadan Apprentice Museum, Aminzadeh Darwish, said.

Despite hot weather, Abadan Apprentice Museum, which has been set up on the venue of Abadan technical-vocational training center, is busy with restoration of different sections, and then official inauguration.

Abadan Apprentice Museum has completed the final stages of restoration in order to be opened as the second petroleum museum in the city.

The museum which opened its doors to public temporarily during the early days of the new Iranian calendar year, began 21st March 2018, was faced with widespread welcome especially by oil industry staff and their families. the visitors response to the opening was unexpected and amazing.

The museum has displayed historical pictures and old instruments on its walls which were very exciting for those oil industry veterans who had been trained and worked with them at technical-vocational training center. Recalling past memories for the oil industry veterans was the other interesting aspect of the opening as it was interesting for younger generation as well.

accidentally, I was lucky to visit the museum during my recent travel to Abadan, where I could visit some of the museum’s staff and express my gratitude to those who are involved in developing the museum, a museum that its development has been started since four years ago under the continuing supervision of the former director of the public relations department of Petroleum Ministry and current director of the Petroleum Museums and Documents Center, Akbar Nematollahi.

During my visit to the museum, I had the opportunity to visit Farshid Khaeez, the representative of petroleum museums in Abadan who told me that most visits to the museum take place during the ending hours of the day or at night, mainly because of hot weather.

According to him, cooling the large spaces of the museum by using ordinary air-conditioners is very difficult continuing the museum is hopeful to get a system named “air-proof” for cooling its large spaces.  

Khaeez continued that launching Abadan Apprentice Museum was impossible in view of many while a number of more optimistic individuals looked at it as a difficult task and at the same time costly project. Despite this, the museum project came to an end successfully and now it is ready for operation.

In addition to Apprentice Museum, Gas Station Museum was launched in Abadan last year while other large projects are underway in the city as well including an oil industry park–museum.

As far as concerned Abadan Apprentice Museum, large sheds, administrative section and exterior spaces are the main parts of the museum, even though one of the sheds which used to be for welding, at present, is not part of the museum. Furthermore, a large part of the spaces have been allocated for collecting objects and documents.

Sheds which used to be used as workshops and training centers make up the main part of the museum. These sheds now are the places where old instruments and equipment are being displayed.

The other noticeable part of the museum is where the pictures and documents are in display, consisting of five rooms. These rooms have displayed noteworthy documents and letters and the room number three includes valuable documents related to oil events in Iran since launching Abadan oil refinery in 1912 as well as other important world oil industry events.

A number of documents depict a kind of comparative history, where some Iranian oil industry events such as the first strike by workers at Abadan oil refinery is happening simulanious with similar oil industry events across the globe and could be interesting not only to visitors but to those interested in contemporary studies and oil industry developments research.

During my visit, I was told that a group of experts of Petroleum Museums has spent at least eight months on this part to provide the possibility of a kind of comparative study.

Furthermore, I heard that the museum plans to provide compact discs containing rare pictures with captions for the visitors which is promising.