Oil ‘bubbled up from the ground’ Robert and Ludvig Nobel.

Few people know about the deep connection that the Nobel brothers - Alfred, Ludvig and Robert - once had with Baku. In fact, when the Nobel Prizes were established more than a century ago (1901), roughly 12 percent of the prize money was drawn from Alfred's shares in the Nobel Brothers' Petroleum Company in Baku.

Oil has been used in Azerbaijan for thousands of years, as lamp fuel and medicine.