Located along the right bank of the Ob River, Nizhnevartovsk is the center of the West Siberian oil-producing region and one of the wealthiest cities in the country. Founded in 1909, it developed into a large city in the 1960s, with the discovery of the gigantic Samotlor Oil Field, the largest in the country. Basically, its history truly began in Brezhnev era, the Soviets building the city from scratch. If in WWII, there were only about 500 residents in Nizhnevartovsk (fishermen, hunters and timber merchants), in nowadays the city has a quarter of a million permanent residents.
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