The Petroleum Production Company Nobel Brothers, Limited, or Branobel, was an oil company set up by Ludvig Nobel and Baron Peter von Bilderling. It operated mainly in Baku, Azerbaijan, but also in Cheleken, Turkmenistan. Originally established by Robert Nobel and the investments of barons Peter von Bilderling and Standertskjöld as a distillery in 1876, it became, during the late-19th century, one of the largest oil-companies in the world.

Vladimir Grigoryevich Shukhov was a Russian and Soviet engineer-polymath, scientist and architect renowned for his pioneering works on new methods of analysis for structural engineering that led to breakthroughs in industrial design of the world's first hyperboloid structures, diagrid shell structures, tensile structures, gridshell structures, oil reservoirs, pipelines, boilers, ships and barges. He is also the inventor of the first cracking method.