Karamay

Karamay is a prefecture-level city in northern Xinjiang whose name means "black oil" in Uyghur, making it the only city in the world named after petroleum. It grew up around the Karamay oilfield, discovered in 1955 as New China's first major oil find, and today it remains the headquarters of PetroChina's Xinjiang oil operations. Decades of oil wealth have made it one of the richest cities in western China by GDP per capita, and it is now diversifying into cloud computing and large data-center parks that exploit its cool climate and cheap energy. Rising out of the Gobi as a fully planned modern oasis, the city is greened by water piped in from the Irtysh River. Its surroundings feature the wind-sculpted Yardang formations of the World Devil City and the original oil seeps of Black Oil Mountain.