Интересно, знал ли Николай Александрович Бутаков о том, что его двоюродный дядя (если я не ошибаюсь) капитан 2-го ранга Иван Иванович Бутаков (1776-1863) посетил Австралию в далеком 1862 году на фрегате Светлана?
Nicholas Boutakoff was born to an aristocratic Russian family and was educated in France. In 1948 (Boutakoff arrived in Melbourne on 30 January 1949 aboard the Orontes) he moved to Australia, and in the 1950s claimed to be one of the first to recognise the potential of the North West Shelf for petroleum production.
Nicholas Aleksandrovitch Boutakoff was born into an aristocratic Russian family in
1903 in Washington DC, where his father was the Naval Attaché. Nicholas later tried to
claim American citizenship, but his nationality was Russian, because he was born in the
Russian embassy....
Full story of his life
На русском языке о его семье
He worked with Woodside starting in 1962, and assisted with the application for a permit for Woodside to explore the North West Shelf. After a disagreement with Woodside management about compensation for his assistance with the permit, he resigned in protest and spent much of the rest of his life pursuing compensation from Woodside.
When systematic oil exploration began in the decades after WWII, Dr Nicholas Boutakoff was one of the most experienced oil geologists in Australia.
Whilst his ideas led to important oil and gas discoveries for Australian interests, he died uncelebrated in 1977, and Rick Wilkinson gave him scant notice in 'A Thirst for Burning', his 1983 classic work on oil exploration in Australia. However, by 1991 Boutakoff was receiving much fuller recognition from Wilkinson and in particular was celebrated by Robert Murray in his history of the North West Shelf Gas Project.
As he came into focus, the myths and misunderstandings about him were explored and Peter Purcell's long interest in Boutakoff resulted in the delivery of a biographical paper to the American Association of Petroleum Geologists at Cartagena, Columbia, in 2013. Mike Butcher also delivered a paper on Boutakoff to the Australasian Mining History Association at its annual conference in Beechworth, Victoria, with the promise of a written paper. What follows is a closer look at Boutakoff, incorporating subsequent investigation and interpretations.
Died 4 February 1977 . Buried at Templestowe cemetery, Victoria