Kohtla-Järve is a city and municipality in north-eastern Estonia, founded in 1924 and incorporated as a town in 1946. The city is highly industrial, and is both a processor of oil shales and is a large producer of various petroleum products. The city is also very diverse ethnically: it contains people of over 40 ethnic groups. Only 21% of the population are ethnic Estonians; most of the rest are Russians. Kohtla-Järve is the fifth-largest city in Estonia.

Kohtla-Järve is unusual among the municipalities of Estonia due to its territory being made of several discontiguous parts. The two main parts, Järve (Kohtla-Järve proper) and Ahtme, both with populations around 20,000, are located about 10 km apart. Several other settlements in north-eastern Ida-Viru county, connected to oil shale mining, are administered as districts of Kohtla-Järve. In the Soviet time, the town of Jõhvi was also incorporated into Kohtla-Järve.

Economy

Kohtla-Järve is known for its chemical industry. It is the headquarters of Viru Keemia Grupp, an Estonian holding group of oil shale industry, power generation, and public utility companies. Eastman Chemical Company also has a manufacturing site located in Kohtla-Järve.

Since 2006 in Kohtla-Järve, Dmitro Firtash‘s DF Group owns a fertilizer plant through its 100% ownership of the 2004 established Vienna based OSTCHEM Holding AG which has a 100% ownership of the Cyprus based Balmat Holding Ltd. which has a 100% ownership of AS Nitrofert (Ukrainian: «Нітроферт»).

Established in 1993 with CEO Alexei Nikolaev (Russian: Алексей Николаев), AS Nitrofert is the only plant to produce fertilizers in Estonia and uses 25% of the total volume of natural gas in Estonia. Dimtro Firtash has been Chairman of the Management Board of AS Nitrofert since 2006.

Geography

Kohtla-Järve has a unique layout. The districts of the city are scattered across the northern part of Ida-Viru County in a considerably large area. The distance between Järve and Sirgala districts is about 30 km. After the administrative reform of 2017, Viivikonna and Sirgala are not part of the municipality anymore.

The city is subdivided into four administrative districts (Estonian: linnaosad):

• Ahtme (17,252 inhabitants in 2011)
  • Männiku (neighborhood of Ahtme)
• Järve (17,054), the main district
• Kukruse (572)
• Oru (1,266)
• Sompa (958)

Viivikonna (including Sirgala) had a population of 99, totaling 37,201 people in the whole municipality in 2011.

The populations of many of the smaller exclaves have rapidly declined since the 1990s.