The history of Ekibastuz begins in the 19th century, when Kosym Pshembayev, a native Kazakh who was commissioned by Russian merchants to look for mineral resources in that region, alighted on a coal field southeast of Pavlodar. The commercial exploitation of the field started soon after. The field afterwards was sold to a British businessman, Leslie Urquhart. The village of Ekibastuz was established in 1899, named after the nearby lake of the same name, which means 2 heads of salt in Kazakh ("eki" 'two' + "bas" 'head' + "tuz" 'salt').