They started the production of crude oil at Shugurovo from the sediments of the Middle Carboniferous by 1946 in Tatarstan, but geologists headed by I.M. Gubkin, insisted back in the 1920s already, that it was necessary to continue looking for large oil in the Urals and the Volga region, and the exploratory efforts should not to be limited by shallow drilling only. In their opinion, most of the oil shows in the Volga region known by that time were not independent, but secondary, and they had to be considered only as a kind of pointers: it was necessary to search here, but in more aged layers.
On September, 1946, a team of drillers headed by S.F. Baklushin tapped a thick oil-bearing horizon of Devonian age at a depth of 1,770 meters, thus confirming the correctness of the geologists’ opinion.
Well No. 1 of the Bavlinskoye field produced 1,300 tonnes of crude oil for the country already in 1946. The field production reached an industrial scale in 1947, and the oilmen totally produced 56.1 thousand tonnes of "black gold" in the TASSR that year. The Company drilled two new wells were in Bavly for the exploration of Devonian oil in the spring of 1948 and received two new gushers. The summer middle of 1950 witnessed the establishment of the Bavlyneft trust on the Basis of the enlarged Bavlinsky oil field, which was the predecessor of the eponymous NGDU.
Subsequently it was just Devonian oil that became the basis for crude oil production in Tatarstan. In 1950, the supergiant Romashkinskoye field was discovered with a significant oil share thereof also accounting for the Devonian deposits. As Nikolai Konstantinovich Baibakov, an outstanding oilman, Chairman of the State Planning Committee of the USSR, once pointed out, "The Tatar oil has been a basis for entire economy of the Soviet Union on for 35 years."
Festive events on the occasion of a significant date will be held in Bavly at well No. 1 today, which is currently a monument.