The gas pipeline comes from the Volga region. The largest gas pipelines The world's first gas pipeline

02.03.2020

Now even a schoolboy knows that the main source of gaseous hydrocarbon raw materials in our country are the fields of the Far North, located mainly on the territory of the Yamalo-Nenets autonomous region. And in the face of this power of Gazprom, the fact is almost forgotten that for the first time large-scale production of natural gas with subsequent long-distance transportation through the pipeline was organized not at all in Siberia, but in the territory of the Middle Volga region.

"Second Baku"

In the 30s of the twentieth century, the industrial development of the vast oil-bearing region of the USSR between the Volga and the Urals began. With light hand theoretical geologists, this territory received the unofficial name "Second Baku". Already at first, refiners faced one important problem: how to dispose of oil gases, which are always present in underground rocks, and when the formation is opened, they rush to the surface along with liquid components.
At different fields, the percentage of gas content in oil was always different. Basically, its concentration was quite small, and it did not interfere with the extraction of black gold. However, in some fields, the volumes of natural gas in the reservoirs turned out to be so huge that it simply did not allow oil to come out of the well. Such fields were already recorded in geological maps as oil and gas fields. At the same time, in the 1930s, for many years they were practically not used in any way, being in a mothballed state.
As for the associated natural gas obtained during the development of oil fields, at that time it was considered a waste of production and was tritely burned in flares, which sometimes can still be seen near our oil refineries to this day.
True, in the 1930s, in some fields of Azerbaijan, there were attempts to use this mineral as fuel, for which small internal gas pipelines were built, but such an experience had no industrial significance then. Already in those years, geologists and petrochemists have repeatedly tried to draw the attention of the management of industrial sectors to the fact that rational use natural gas can bring the country no less income than oil refining and coal mining. However, no one listened to the opinion of specialists for a long time - until a severe need forced them to do so. The Great Patriotic War began.

Nobody needs natural gas

Previously, natural gas was simply burned
During the first months of the war in Kuibyshev (now Samara), which at that time had the status of the "second capital of the USSR", the problem of the fastest gasification arose. industrial enterprises, as well as the entire social sphere of the city. The fact is that due to the occupation of the Donbass by the Nazis, the supply of Donetsk coal of the ASh grade was stopped at the Kuibyshev State District Power Plant and the Bezymyanskaya Thermal Power Plant. And although since November 1941 both enterprises switched to supplying coal mined in the Karaganda region, it soon became clear that this fuel did not meet the technological requirements imposed on it by power plants.
In particular, there was too much waste rock in Kazakhstani coal, and besides, it came in open wagons, because of which it turned out to be frozen and mixed with snow. Therefore, the leadership of the Directorate of Special Construction of the NKVD of the USSR (abbreviated as UOS, or Osobstroy), located in Kuibyshev, whose main task was the construction of large aircraft factories and other defense enterprises on Bezymyanka, was constantly distracted from the construction of these facilities. Large teams of prisoners were sent to the railway station, who smashed the frozen mass of coal in the wagons with picks and crowbars - otherwise there was no way to unload them.
These and other difficulties in late 1941 - early 1942 forced the leadership of the Soviet aviation industry, which included the most important Kuibyshev factories, to look for alternative sources of energy supply for industrial enterprises. A way out was found in the transfer of the Kuibyshevskaya GRES and BCHPP to the combustion of natural gas, significant reserves of which by that time had been explored on the border of the Kuibyshev and Orenburg regions - in the vicinity of the cities of Pokhvistnevo and Buguruslan.
In the late 1930s, large-scale exploration work was carried out in the vast expanses of the Middle Volga region to search for oil. However, in the Orenburg region, instead of black gold deposits, drilling rigs often opened underground layers with large reserves of natural gas. At that time, this natural raw material was not of interest to industry. All wells in which no oil was found were blocked, and in the national economic plans, the start of any exploitation of the Pokhvistnev and Buguruslan gas fields was postponed indefinitely.
Business executives had to remember this source of natural gas during the tense time of the Great Patriotic War. After discussing a number of options for the uninterrupted supply of Bezymyanka enterprises with fuel, it was decided in as soon as possible to build a gas pipeline, gigantic for those times, through which to supply raw materials to the reserve capital of the USSR from the western regions of the Orenburg region.

Stalin gave the order

The laying of gas pipelines was carried out manually. 1942
The issue of providing defense enterprises with fuel was decided at the level of the chairman of the USSR State Defense Committee (GKO USSR) Joseph Stalin, who signed the secret decree No. 1563s of April 7, 1942 “On the construction of the Buguruslan-Kuibyshev gas pipeline”. According to this document, the transportation of fuel along the route was to begin in the coming December. The initial throughput capacity of the pipeline was determined at 150 million cubic meters of gas per year, but by the third quarter of 1943, the miners were obliged to pump 220 million cubic meters through it.
In accordance with the above-mentioned government decree, on May 20, 1942, the Administration for the Construction of the Buguruslan-Kuibyshev Gas Pipeline was established in the city on the Volga. However, despite all the efforts of the builders, it was not possible to put the track into operation in 1942. There was a shortage of manpower, especially in the first months, and therefore 3,000 prisoners from the Bezymyanlag UOS of the NKVD of the USSR, who had previously built aircraft factories in Kuibyshev, were transferred to the laying of the gas pipeline.
In the winter of 1942-1943, 800 qualified oil workers, who already had considerable experience in laying pipelines, were urgently sent from Baku to the Kuibyshev region. And in order to further increase the pace of construction of the most important facility, by order of the State Defense Committee of the USSR in neighboring Bashkiria, the dismantling of the Ishimbayevo-Ufa oil pipeline began, the pipes from which were then transported to Buguruslan and further distributed along the future route. The main section of the fuel line (Kuibyshev - Pokhvistnevo) with a length of 160 kilometers was put into operation on September 15, 1943. And at the end of December of the same year, a section of the route from Buguruslan to Pokhvistnev was also connected to the pipe, after which the total length of the gas pipeline reached 180 kilometers. This highway became the very first industrial gas pipeline in the USSR.
In parallel with the connection of power plants to the highway, the construction of another section of it was going on, stretching to the Krasnoglinsky district, where there were also many defense enterprises. Already on December 31, 1943, a section of the fuel line from Bezymyanka to Mekhzavod with a length of 5.6 kilometers was put into operation. In total, from September 1943 to July 1945, Kuibyshev's energy enterprises received 260 billion cubic meters of natural gas through the new gas pipeline, which turned out to be equivalent to 370 thousand tons of coal.

Start of mass gasification

Then it was calculated that thanks to this gas pipeline, the railway workers freed up 20,000 wagons from transporting coal, which, in difficult wartime, were urgently needed by the country for transporting defense cargo. In the second half of 1945, the Kuibyshevskaya State District Power Plant and the Bezymyanskaya Thermal Power Plant switched from gas fuel to burning crude oil, which by that time had begun to flow here through the oil pipeline from the Zolny area. Even during the Great Patriotic War, after natural gas was supplied to the boilers of energy enterprises, mass gasification of residential buildings and social facilities in Kuibyshev and the region also began - even earlier than in Moscow and Leningrad. By 1950, the length of intracity networks in the region exceeded 200 kilometers. In that year, there were already about 10 thousand gasified apartments in the region. So the Volga city became a pioneer of household gasification in the USSR.
Valery EROFEEV

They have more than half a century of history. Construction began with the development of oil fields in Baku and Grozny. The current map of Russia's gas pipelines includes almost 50,000 km of main pipelines, through which most of the Russian oil is pumped.

History of Russian gas pipelines

Pipeline in Russia began to be actively developed back in 1950, which was associated with the development of new deposits and the construction in Baku. Already by 2008, the amount of transported oil and oil products reached 488 million tons. Compared to 2000, the figures increased by 53%.

Every year, Russian gas pipelines (the scheme is updated and reflects all pipelines) are growing. If in 2000 the length was 61 thousand km, in 2008 it was already 63 thousand km. By 2012, Russia's main gas pipelines had expanded significantly. The map showed about 250 thousand km of the pipeline. Of these, 175 thousand km was the length of the gas pipeline, 55 thousand km - the length of the oil pipeline, 20 thousand km - the length of the oil product pipeline.

Gas pipeline transport in Russia

A gas pipeline is an engineering design of pipeline transport that is used to transport methane and natural gas. The gas supply is carried out with the help of excess pressure.

Today it is hard to believe that the Russian Federation (today the largest exporter of "blue fuel") initially depended on raw materials purchased abroad. In 1835, the first plant for the extraction of "blue fuel" was opened in St. Petersburg with a distribution system from the field to the consumer. This plant produced gas from foreign coal. 30 years later, the same plant was built in Moscow.

Due to the high cost of building gas pipes and imported raw materials, Russia's first gas pipelines were small. Pipelines were produced with large diameters (1220 and 1420 mm) and with a large length. With the development of natural gas field technologies and its production, the size of the “blue rivers” in Russia began to increase rapidly.

The largest gas pipelines in Russia

Gazprom is the largest operator of the gas artery in Russia. The main activities of the corporation are:

geological exploration, production, transportation, storage, processing;
production and sale of heat and electricity.

On the this moment There are such existing gas pipelines:

"Blue Stream".
"Progress".
"Union".
Nord Stream.
"Yamal-Europe".
"Urengoy-Pomary-Uzhgorod".
"Sakhalin-Khabarovsk-Vladivostok".

Since many investors are interested in the development of the oil and oil refining sector, engineers are actively developing and building new major gas pipelines in Russia.

Russian oil pipelines

An oil pipeline is an engineering design of pipeline transport that is used to transport oil from a production site to a consumer. There are two types of pipelines: main and field.

The largest oil pipelines:

Druzhba is one of the major routes of the Russian Empire. Today's production volume is 66.5 million tons per year. The highway runs from Samara through Bryansk. In the city of Mozyr, Druzhba is divided into two sections:

southern highway - passes through Ukraine, Croatia, Hungary, Slovakia, Czech Republic;
the northern highway - through Germany, Latvia, Poland, Belarus and Lithuania.

The Baltic Pipeline System is an oil pipeline system that connects an oil production site with a seaport. The capacity of such a pipeline is 74 million tons of oil per year.
The Baltic Pipeline System-2 is a system that links the Druzhba oil pipeline with Russian ports in the Baltic. The capacity is 30 million tons per year.
The Eastern Oil Pipeline connects the production site in Eastern and Western Siberia with the US and Asian markets. The capacity of such an oil pipeline reaches 58 million tons per year.
The Caspian Pipeline Consortium is an important international project with the participation of the largest oil producing companies, created for the construction and operation of pipes with a length of 1.5 thousand km. The operating capacity is 28.2 million tons per year.

Gas pipelines from Russia to Europe

Russia can supply gas to Europe in three ways: through the Ukrainian gas transportation system, as well as through the Nord Stream and Yamal-Europe gas pipelines. In the event that Ukraine finally ceases cooperation with the Russian Federation, the supply of "blue fuel" to Europe will be carried out exclusively by Russian gas pipelines.

The scheme for supplying methane to Europe involves, for example, the following options:

Nord Stream is a gas pipeline that connects Russia and Germany along the bottom of the Baltic Sea. The pipeline bypasses transit states: Belarus, Poland and Nord Stream was put into operation relatively recently - in 2011.
"Yamal-Europe" - the length of the gas pipeline is more than two thousand kilometers, the pipes pass through the territory of Russia, Belarus, Germany and Poland.
"Blue Stream" - the gas pipeline connects Russian Federation and Turkey along the bottom of the Black Sea. Its length is 1213 km. The design capacity is 16 billion cubic meters per year.
"South Stream" - the pipeline is divided into offshore and onshore sections. The offshore section runs along the bottom of the Black Sea and connects the Russian Federation, Turkey, and Bulgaria. The length of the section is 930 km. The land section passes through the territory of Serbia, Bulgaria, Hungary, Italy, Slovenia.

Gazprom announced that in 2017 the gas price for Europe will be increased by 8-14%. Russian analysts say that the volume of deliveries this year will be higher than in 2016. The income of the gas monopoly of the Russian Federation in 2017 may grow by $34.2 billion.

Russian gas pipelines: import schemes

Near abroad countries to which Russia supplies gas include:

Ukraine (sales volume is 14.5 billion cubic meters).
Belarus (19.6).
Kazakhstan (5.1).
Moldova (2.8).
Lithuania (2.5).
Armenia (1.8).
Latvia (1).
Estonia (0.4).
Georgia (0.3).
South Ossetia (0.02).

Among non-CIS countries, Russian gas is used by:

Germany (supply volume is 40.3 billion cubic meters).
Turkey (27.3).
Italy (21.7).
Poland (9.1).
UK (15.5).
Czech Republic (0.8) and others.

Gas supply to Ukraine

In December 2013, Gazprom and Naftogaz signed an addendum to the contract. The document indicated a new "discount" price, a third less than prescribed in the contract. The agreement entered into force on January 1, 2014, and is due to be renewed every three months. Due to debts for gas, Gazprom canceled the discount in April 2014, and since April 1, the price has increased to $500 per thousand cubic meters (the discounted price was $268.5 per thousand cubic meters).

Gas pipelines planned for construction in Russia

The map of Russian gas pipelines at the development stage includes five sections. The South Stream project between Anapa and Bulgaria has not been implemented; Altai is being built - this is a gas pipeline between Siberia and Western China. The Caspian gas pipeline, which will supply natural gas from the Caspian Sea, in the future should pass through the territory of the Russian Federation, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan. For deliveries from Yakutia to the countries of the Asia-Pacific region, another route is being built - Yakutia-Khabarovsk-Vladivostok.

gas pipeline- a structure for the transportation of combustible gases from the place of extraction or production to points of consumption. There are underground, above-ground (on supports), in an embankment. The gas pressure in the main gas pipeline is maintained by gas compressor stations. Gas distribution stations are being built at the end points of the main gas pipeline. The maximum diameter of the pipes of the main gas pipeline is 1420 mm.

Story

The first mention of the gas pipeline dates back to the beginning of our era, when bamboo pipes were used to transmit natural gas in China. At the end of the 18th century In Europe, gas pipelines made of cast-iron pipes, replaced in the 19th and 20th centuries, began to be used. steel , providing transportation of gas under higher pressure than through cast - iron pipelines . The extraction of natural gas reached its greatest extent by the beginning of the 20th century. in the USA (20 billion m3), where the total length of numerous short gas pipelines reached 22,000 km (1918). Between 1928 and 1931 gas pipelines 800 to 1,500 km long and 508 to 660 mm in diameter were built in the United States.

In St. Petersburg, the first gas plant (which produced lighting gas from imported coal) and a distribution system were built in 1835, in Moscow - in 1865.

The costs for the construction and operation of gas pipelines are high, so the first gas pipelines of great length appeared with the start of exploitation of natural gas fields. The first gas pipeline in the USSR from the Dashava fields to Lvov was built in 1940-1941 (the first gas pipeline from Dashava to Stryi was built in 1924). During the Great Patriotic War, gas pipelines were built from Buguruslan and Pokhvistnevo to Kuibyshev (160 km, pipe diameter 300 mm), as well as from Elshanka to Saratov.

The first main gas pipeline in the USSR was the Saratov-Moscow gas pipeline, which came into operation in 1946.

The largest gas pipeline system in the world is the Unified Gas Supply System.

Classification of gas pipelines

According to the method of laying, gas pipelines are distinguished:

underground,
ground,
in the embankment.

The main gas pipelines were usually laid underground in the European part of the USSR (in the zone of seasonal freezing of the soil). In the northern regions, the above-ground laying of a gas pipeline on supports, the so-called. "snake". In the zone of distribution of permafrost soils, gas pipelines are laid in an embankment or by above-ground and underground methods. In some cases, gas pipelines are placed on supports or suspended from cables (large ravines, rivers), and also laid along the bottom of reservoirs (the so-called siphons).

To protect pipes from corrosion (internal or external), anti-corrosion insulation is used, as well as cathodic and sacrificial protection.

Gas pressure in long-distance main gas pipelines is maintained

Currently, the main source of gaseous hydrocarbon raw materials in our country are the fields of the Far North, located mainly on the territory of the Yamalo-Nenets National District. However, not everyone knows that for the first time large-scale production of natural gas for the purpose of using it in industry and in everyday life was organized not at all in Siberia, but in the territory of the Middle Volga region. And for more than 60 years, the Samara region has been at the forefront not only in the development of gas fields, but also in the practical use of "blue fuel".

The Great Patriotic War prompted the use of natural gas. Due to the occupation of the Donbass by the Nazis, the supply of Donetsk coal of the ASh grade was stopped at the Kuibyshevskaya GRES and the BTPP. There was a need for alternative fuels.

Nobody needs natural gas

In the second half of the 1930s, industrial development of oil fields began in the Syzran region. Later, significant reserves of "black gold" were discovered on the territory of the Samarskaya Luka and in the Kuibyshev Trans-Volga region. At the same time, at the very beginning, refiners faced one important problem: how to dispose of oil gases, which are always present in underground rocks and rush to the surface along with liquid oil components when a reservoir is opened?

At different fields, the percentage of gas content in oil was always different. Basically, its concentration was small and could not interfere with the production of "black gold", however, in some fields, the volumes of natural gas in the reservoirs turned out to be so huge that it simply did not allow oil to come out of the well.

Such deposits were recorded in geological maps no longer as oil fields, but as oil and gas fields. At the same time, in the 30s, for a number of years, they were practically not used in any way, being in a mothballed state. As for the associated natural gas obtained during the development of oil fields, at that time it was considered production waste and was burned in flares, which can still be seen at some Samara fields to this day. True, in the 1930s, at some fields in Azerbaijan, there were attempts to use associated gas as fuel, for which internal gas pipelines were built, but this experience had no industrial significance at that time.

good reason

Already in those years, geologists and petrochemists have repeatedly tried to draw the attention of the leadership of industrial sectors to the fact that the rational use of natural gas can bring the country no less income than oil refining and coal mining. However, for a long time no one listened to the opinion of specialists: until a severe necessity forced it to be done, the Great Patriotic War began.

Even in its very first months in Kuibyshev, which at that time had the status of the “second capital of the USSR”, the problem of the fastest gasification of industrial enterprises, as well as the entire social sphere, arose acutely. The fact is that due to the occupation of the Donbass by the Nazis, the supply of Donetsk coal of the ASh grade was stopped at the Kuibyshevskaya GRES and the BTPP. And although since November 1941 both stations switched to supplying coal mined in the Karaganda region, it soon became clear that this fuel did not meet the technological requirements for it at the CHPP. In particular, there was too much waste rock in Kazakh coal, and besides, it came in open wagons, due to which it turned out to be frozen and mixed with snow. Therefore, the leadership of the Directorate of Special Construction of the NKVD of the USSR (abbreviated as UOS or Osobstroy), located in Kuibyshev, whose main task was the construction of large aircraft factories and other defense enterprises on Bezymyanka, turned out to be constantly distracted from the construction of these facilities. Large teams of prisoners were sent to the railway station, who smashed the frozen mass of coal in the wagons with picks and crowbars - otherwise there was no way to unload them.

These and other difficulties in late 1941 - early 1942 forced the leadership of the region and the entire Soviet aviation industry, which included the most important Kuibyshev factories, to look for alternative sources of energy supply for industrial enterprises. A way out was found in the transfer of the Kuibyshevskaya GRES and the Bezymyanskaya CHPP to burning natural gas, significant reserves of which by that time had been explored on the border of the Kuibyshev and Orenburg regions - in the vicinity of the cities of Pokhvistnevo and Buguruslan.

At the end of the 30s, in these places, as in many other points of the Middle Volga region, geological exploration for oil was carried out, but instead of "black gold", drilling rigs here uncovered underground layers with large reserves of natural gas. Then the wells were clogged, and in the national economic plans, the beginning of any exploitation of the Pokhvistnev and Buguruslan gas fields was relegated to an indefinite future.

The first gas pipeline in the USSR

Business executives had to remember this source of natural gas during the most stressful time of the Great Patriotic War. After discussing a number of options for the uninterrupted supply of Bezymyanka enterprises with fuel, it was decided to lay a gas pipeline, gigantic for those times, through which gas could be supplied to the spare capital of the USSR from the western regions of the Orenburg region as soon as possible.

The issue was resolved at the level of the chairman of the State Defense Committee of the USSR (GKO USSR) Joseph Stalin, who signed the secret decree No. 1563c of April 7, 1942 "On the construction of the Buguruslan-Kuibyshev gas pipeline." According to this document, the transportation of fuel along the route was to begin in December 1942. The initial throughput capacity of the pipeline was determined at 150 million cubic meters of gas per year, but by the third quarter of 1943, the miners were obliged to pump 220 million cubic meters through it.

In accordance with a government decree on May 20, 1942, the Administration for the Construction of the Buguruslan-Kuibyshev Gas Pipeline was established in the regional capital. But despite all the efforts of the builders, it was not possible to put the track into operation in 1942. There was an acute shortage of labor at construction sites, especially in the first months, and therefore 3,000 prisoners from the Bezymyanlag UOS of the NKVD of the USSR, who had previously been employed in the construction of aircraft factories in Kuibyshev, were transferred to lay the gas pipeline. In addition, in the winter of 1942-1943, 800 qualified oil workers, who had already had considerable experience in laying pipelines, were urgently sent from Baku to the Kuibyshev region. And in order to further increase the pace of construction of this most important facility, by order of the State Defense Committee of the USSR in neighboring Bashkiria, the dismantling of the Ishimbayevo-Ufa oil pipeline began, the pipes from which were then transported to Buguruslan and then distributed along the future route.

The main section of the fuel line between Kuibyshev and Pokhvistnev, 160 km long, was put into operation on September 15, 1943. Since that day, the history of the first domestic gas transmission company has been counting down, which today, after repeated name changes, is called Gazprom Transgaz Samara LLC. And at the end of December of the same year, a section of the route from Buguruslan to Pokhvistnev was connected to the pipe, after which the total length of the gas pipeline reached 180 km. At that time, this gas pipeline was the largest in the USSR.

In parallel with the connection of the Kuibyshevskaya GRES and the Bezymyanskaya CHPP to the gas pipeline, the construction of another section of it was going on, stretching to the Krasnoglinsky district, where there were also many defense enterprises. Already on December 31, 1943, a 5.6 km section of the fuel route from Bezymyanka to Mekhzavod was put into operation. In total, from September 1943 to July 1945, Kuibyshev's energy enterprises received 260 billion cubic meters of natural gas through the new gas pipeline, which turned out to be equivalent to 370 thousand tons of coal. At the same time, it was calculated that thanks to this gas pipeline, the railway workers in those years freed up 20 thousand wagons from coal transportation, which were urgently needed by the country for the transportation of defense goods in difficult wartime. But in the second half of 1945, the Kuibyshevskaya State District Power Plant and the Bezymyanskaya Thermal Power Plant switched from gas fuel to burning crude oil, which by that time had begun to flow here through the oil pipeline from the Zolny area.

Even during the war years, after natural gas was supplied to the boilers of energy enterprises, mass gasification of residential buildings and social facilities in Kuibyshev and the region began - earlier than in Moscow and Leningrad. By 1950, the length of intracity gas networks in the region exceeded 200 km. That year there were about 10,000 gasified apartments in the region. Their number began to grow at an accelerated pace after the Mukhanovo-Kuibyshev gas pipeline, 120 km long, was put into operation on December 27, 1957.

And the population was provided

As for connecting villages and villages of the Kuibyshev region to gas networks, in the 50-60s we practically did not carry out such work. Nevertheless, already at that time, an extensive network of supplying urban and rural consumers with bottled gas was formed in the region. At the end of the 60s, gas stations were already operating in almost all regional centers, where cylinders of various capacities were filled with a liquefied butane-propane mixture, and then they were transported to villages. And in 1970, mass construction of local highways for supplying network gas began in rural areas. At the same time, the first village where “blue fuel” came through the new networks was Belozerki, Volzhsky district, where on March 27, 1971, gas stoves were lit in 200 apartments at once.

Mass laying of gas pipelines to settlements Kuibyshev region began in the late 70s. Network gas began to reach more remote regions only in the 1980s.

In general, all the villages of the Volzhsky region were connected to the network gas already in the mid-70s. By that time, work began on laying local gas pipelines in the Stavropol, Krasnoyarsk, Bezenchuk, Kinel, Sergievsky and a number of other districts of our region. The situation in providing villages and villages with "blue fuel" improved even more after the Orenburg-Kuibyshev gas pipeline was put into operation on February 17, 1974. Then additional resources appeared in our region for a significant expansion of rural gasification.

Since the end of the 70s, mass laying of gas pipelines to the settlements of Krasnoarmeisky, Neftegorsky, Privolzhsky, Kinel-Cherkassky, Bolshegluchitsky, Shentalinsky and other regions began. Network gas began to reach more remote places in the Kuibyshev region only in the 1980s.

No risk of freezing

In the post-war years, fuel replacement continued at an accelerated pace at energy facilities in the Kuibyshev region: instead of coal, more and more began to burn heavy oil fractions (fuel oil) and natural gas. In particular, on December 31, 1947, on the basis of its own oil fields, the first stage of the Syzran CHPP began its work, where one boiler and one turbine unit came into operation.

The next energy company in the region, operating on oil and gas, was the Novokuibyshevskaya CHPP, designed to provide energy to the Novokuibyshevsk refinery under construction. The first stage of this combined heat and power plant was put into operation on October 1, 1951. At the same time, the oil refinery itself started working a month after the start-up of the thermal power plant. And the further construction of new thermal capacities in Novokuibyshevsk was closely connected with the growth of industrial production. In the early 1960s, an operating synthetic alcohol plant was put into operation here, and then an oil refinery began to expand and be reconstructed. In 1964, a number of industries emerged from its workshops, on the basis of which the production association Novokuibyshevsk Petrochemical Plant was created at the same time. By that time, the construction of CHPP-2, which also runs on gas, had already been completed in the city.

In connection with the construction of large chemical and petrochemical enterprises in the region of Stavropol and Zhigulevsk, which was planned back in the early 1950s, the construction of thermal power plants began here in parallel with the construction of the Kuibyshev hydroelectric power station. The first phase of the Stavropol CHPP was put into operation on September 28, 1960, when a boiler with a capacity of 420 tons of steam per hour started working here.

As for the regional center, by the beginning of the 70s, the growing city, the number of inhabitants of which exceeded one million, experienced an acute need for new energy sources. A way out was found in the construction of the Kuibyshev thermal power plant on Alma-Atinskaya street, which runs on gas fuel. Its first stage went into operation on November 1, 1972, and the rest over the next two years. In the same period, the Central and Railway Station Heating Boilers, which also operated on natural gas, were already operating in Kuibyshev.

Over the past decade, there has not been a single large thermal power facility left in the Samara Region that has not been transferred to the supply of "blue fuel". At the same time, dozens of small boiler houses that were previously heated with fuel oil were closed in the region, and all consumers of heat previously supplied by these facilities were connected to large centralized sources. Such a decision, in addition to transferring the entire heating system of our region from heavy oil products to cheaper gas raw materials, by reducing the pollution of emissions, helped to significantly improve the environmental situation in many cities and towns.

Regarding the tantrums of idiots and speculators about the immense volumes of gas pumped out of the Galician reserves, which until 1967 heated the entire USSR. Even in the heyday of the whole of Ukraine there were 35 billion cubic meters - now this is Ukraine for half a year of life.

The gas and energy industry of the previously unified state arose in the thirties of the 20th century, one of the centers of its origin was Ukraine. The mass construction of gas pipelines began during and immediately after the Second World War. Commissioned in 1946, the Saratov-Moscow main gas pipeline made of pipes with a diameter of 325 mm and a length of 800 km was the first in its class. Then the largest highways were built: Dashava-Kyiv-Moscow (1300 km). The largest gas transportation systems of the USSR in the sixties were the Central Asia - Center system of pipes with a diameter of 1020 and 1220 mm with a total length of about 5500 km and a throughput capacity of 25 billion cubic meters. m per year; export gas pipeline "Soyuz" with a length of 2750 km, and in 1984 the longest gas pipeline in the world, Western Siberia - France, was built. By 1950, out of 85 billion cubic meters. m of industrial reserves (explored and developed) of the USSR, Ukraine accounted for 35 billion cubic meters. m, in the RSFSR - 42 billion cubic meters. m.
gas production statistics in Ukraine since 1960:
Billion cube m
1960 14.3
1970 60.9
1980 56.7
1990 28.1
2000 18 and beyond at about 18-20 billion a year. From the East (Shebelinka) near Kharkov and Poltava.

Over the years, the pace of pipeline construction has increased dramatically.

So, the Saratov-Moscow gas pipeline was built for 2.5 years, Dashava-Kyiv - 2 years; the first stage of the Bukhara-Ural gas pipeline with a length of 2200 km with a pipe diameter of 1020 mm was built within 2 years, and the first stage of the Central Asia-Center gas pipeline with a length of more than 2700 km with a pipe diameter of 1020 mm was built in 1.5 years.

The most famous gas pipeline is Urengoy-Pomary-Uzhgorod, which was built in 1983. The length of this main gas pipeline is 4451 km, 1160 km of which pass through the territory of Ukraine. Its capacity is 27.9 billion cubic meters. m of gas per year (design capacity - 32 billion cubic meters per year). There are nine compressor stations along the pipeline route.

Now general attention involved in the Yamal project, which is linked to the Belarusian gas system. The Yamal-Europe gas pipeline was conceived as a strategic one, designed to create a flexible scheme for transporting Russian gas to Europe. The length of the export route should be 4.1 thousand km (from the Yamal fields through Ukhta and Torzhok, through Belarus and Poland to Germany), and by 2010 it is planned to increase the capacity to 65.7 billion cubic meters. m of gas per year, 29 compressor stations have been designed.

By 1999, sections of the gas pipeline in Poland, Germany and Belarus were put into operation, in October 2001 the first Russian gas was delivered to Holland. It is planned to extend the Bovanenkovo-Ukhta-Torzhok route through Belarus and the eastern border of Germany. The final cost of the project is about 36 billion dollars.

The total length of main gas pipelines in the USSR by 1970 reached 70 thousand km. Powerful main gas pipelines are economically highly efficient, so the trend was aimed at increasing their diameter. If by 1968 the maximum diameter of pipes used in the USA was 1067 mm, in the USSR - 1420 mm, the average diameter in the USSR was 674 mm, in the USA - 410 mm. The construction of powerful gas pipelines required the organization of gas fields with an annual gas production of 50-100 billion cubic meters. m. The daily productivity of the well was 2-3 million cubic meters. At the same time, it should be noted that the pace of development of trunk gas transport and the development of new fields has decreased in the last decade: for example, only a section of 117 km was commissioned on the Yamal-Europe gas pipeline in 1996, in 2002 - 67 km.

The gas transportation system of all CIS countries in total terms is inferior in capacity to the Russian gas transportation system by about half (77.7 thousand km of gas pipelines against 150.2 thousand km). However, almost all CIS countries have main gas pipelines through which gas is pumped from fields to consumers in third countries.

Therefore, without using the gas transportation system of the CIS countries, OAO Gazprom deprives itself of most of the foreign market. This transit potential of the CIS countries explains Gazprom's interest in them.

The gas capacities of Ukraine are of independent interest for Gazprom: domestic gas consumption in Ukraine is annually about 75 billion cubic meters. m. In the energy balance of this country, gas occupies 41%. Of the total consumption, industrial facilities account for about 60%. The remaining 40% is the share of the population and household consumers. In total, more than 85 thousand enterprises and organizations and 16.1 million apartments have been gasified in the country. The gas balance of Ukraine for 2005 consists of 20.1 billion cubic meters. m of own production, more than 36 billion cubic meters. m of supplies from Central Asia (mainly Turkmenistan) and about 23 billion cubic meters. m supplied by Gazprom. 5 billion cubic meters m of gas Ukraine exports itself.

The total length of gas pipelines in Ukraine is 283.2 thousand km, of which 246.1 thousand km are distribution networks and 37.1 thousand km are main pipelines, including 14 thousand km are pipelines of the largest diameter (1020-1420 mm ). The system combines 72 compression stations (122 compressor shops) and 13 underground storage facilities with the largest active gas volume in Europe after Russia - more than 32 billion cubic meters. m, or 21.3% of the total European active capacity. Ukrainian gas pipelines are connected to the main networks of all neighboring states: Russia, Belarus, Moldova, Romania, Poland, Hungary and Slovakia. The throughput capacity of the system at the inlet is 290 billion cubic meters. m per year, the output - 175 billion cubic meters. m. Through the gas pipeline system of Ukraine, Russian gas is transited to European countries, as well as to the southern regions of Russia. In 2007, 120 billion cubic meters were pumped through Ukrainian gas pipelines to Europe. m of Russian gas.

The main transit countries through which Russian gas is delivered to consumers, in addition to Ukraine, include Belarus and Georgia. About 225 billion cubic meters are supplied through them. m of gas. That is why Gazprom is interested in establishing control over gas transportation systems to ensure supplies. Over the next 5 years, export volumes will double due to eastern directions, and then offshore pipelines to the south and west. Only one liquefied gas plant in the Far East immediately captured 7% of the world market.

The total length of gas networks in Belarus is more than 30,000 km (before 1992, the length was 14,000 km). There are 7.1 thousand km of main gas pipelines and gas pipeline branches, two underground gas storage facilities with a capacity of 1 billion cubic meters. m, more than 30 thousand km of networks, six compressor and seven measuring stations. Over the past 10 years, 50 regional centers have been supplied with gas in Belarus, including 13 centers polluted due to an accident at Chernobyl nuclear power plant, 40 cities, 39 urban settlements, and the total length of gas networks has more than doubled, the annual growth of gas pipelines - up to 1.6 thousand km. The share of gasification of the housing stock with natural gas in Belarus is now 58.2%. More than 2 million apartments have been gasified with natural gas, but the share of gasification in cities is 90%, and in rural areas - only 10%.
The Ukraine-Russia gas system was built in the 1950s and 1970s as a single whole, and its isolation leads to a deterioration in the parameters of the system and a decrease in the reliability of natural gas exports to Europe. Natural gas prices are the product of political agreements in which energy security plays a paramount role. And to arrange annual squabbles is deadly for the dependent party.

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