This year Sabit Orudzhev, the Gas Industry Minister of the USSR between 1972 and 1981 would have turned 100. Under his guidance the Ministry led the gas extraction to the record level - 800 billion cubic meters a year. This record was not overcome yet, and Orudzhev is the only person on the planet who headed the institution extracting so much gas. VK publishes the recollections of Orudzhev’s colleagues about him and his reforms in the Soviet gas branch.
With the participation of Orudzhev in the 1980s Western Siberia formed a biggest in history of gas industry network of deposits and gas pipelines that ensure the delivery of gas to basically all the consuming regions of the country and abroad. The extraction of natural gas in Tyumen region increased from 11.6 billion cubic meters in 1972 to 144 cubic meters in 1980.
“Everyone of us who worked in gas industry would have been on a different place and thought differently if it was not for the influence of Orudzhev on the gas industry in the 1970s and 1980s”, says the former Head of Technical Department of the Soviet Ministry for Gas Industry Alexandr Sedykh who since 1993 heads the Department of technical innovations and ecology of Gazprom.
“In 8 years that Sabit Orudzhev was managing the gas branch of the country, the gas extraction increased from 220 to almost 450 billion cubic meters a year, and the pipelines were extended for 53000 km. Today’s Gazprom owns a lot to this man, one of the biggest organizers of the gas industry in the country. Sabit Orudzhev valued the employees for their work and loyalty to their branch. He believed in the employees of his ministry, and the employees believed in him. During all his work at the Ministry of Gas Industry the fulfillment of the set plan of the industrial development was sacral to him. I can still hear in my ears his speech on New Year’s eve on December 31, 1972: “Let the last day of this year be the last day when we could not realize the plan of gas extraction”. Sabit Orudzhev brilliantly fulfilled his task. Without pessimism in the times of hardships and without triumphing in the days of success.
The day after he was appointed the Minister, the head of the government Alexei Kosygin called him and asked about the low delivery of gas to one of the most important plant in the country. Orudzhev replied that he was appointed less than 24 hours ago and he cannot take his criticism, but Kosygin noted: “You are responsible for gas supplies from the first minute you became the minister”. This lesson he later reminded to all the managers. He had to immediately learn and understand the work of the gas industry. Orudzhev was a tough and demanding leader… But he easily calmed down after a wigging that he could give if he believed that the task was not fulfilled.
Once in winter 1975, when the first line of Orenburg gas and chemical plant was set, he sent me with a group of specialists with a task to argue for the increasing pressure in the gas pipes to increase their performance and the extraction of gas. He added that he discussed it with Kosygin as if it was a solved problem. On the spot it turned out that all the experts are totally against this decision as they believe that the increased pressure will increase the tension higher than the limit yield strength of steel that will lead to the breaks in the pipes. It will lead not to the increase but decrease of gas extraction. When I told this to Orudzhev he got very angry and said that we cannot work together. In several days he invited several other specialists whom he knew from his work in the Ministry of Oil Industry, expecting that they will support him. To his surprise none of the six invited experts could confirm the possibility of increasing the pressures, and Sabit Orudzhev had to agree with them. He never reproached me or showed any sign of disrespect to me afterwards. He always was a confident minister.
Once in August he came back from vacations and saw that on the eve of the cold season the extraction of gas is not sufficient to ensure the constant gas supply in the coming winter. He was told that the situation is connected to the fact that at some places the extraction reached its limit. He took the responsibility for extracting more gas above the technologically allowed limit on the main gas fields – Shatlykskoye, Orebburgskoye, Medvezhiye, Vuktylskoye and increased the extraction to reach the necessary level of gas supplies for the autumn-winter exploitation.
He could not calmly observe the open windows in winter. One cold winter days Orudzhev invited Kosygin to the ministry. During the meeting Orudzhev invited him to the window and showed the open windows of the residential building on the opposite side on the street, hoping for his support for energy-saving policy.
In case of accidents that could lead to the breaks in gas supplies, he immediately flew to the spot. As soon as he got the information that geologists in Astrakhan found a new gas deposit and the drilled showed industrial flow of gas, he flew to Astrakhan the next day to see it with his own eyes.
He immediately created an expert group headed by me and sent us to Canada to get accustomed to study the extraction of the sour gas as the gas from Astrakhan was. Using the materials of the group two weeks afterwards he submits a project of the exploitation of the Astrakhan gas deposit and the construction of the Astrakhan Gas and Chemistry complex that was approved by the Council of Ministers.
One evening he called me and said that the next day at 7 a.m. I have to be in Vnukovo airport to fly to Nikolayev and study the plant for sheep gas turbine engines. The day before he received information about the high efficiency of the usage of the sheep gas turbines as the centrifugal blowers drives at compressor stations. When we submitted the documents we thought that he would call a meeting to discuss it, but he reacted immediately and wanted to see everything with his eyes. At 8 a.m. next day we flew to Odessa and then drove to Nikolayev, coming back to Moscow the same day at 10 p.m. Later it resulted in construction on the proposal of the Ministry of gas industry and the Ministry of the ship industry of a plant for ship turbines in Krivoy Rog and another one for centrifugal blowers in Ivano-Frankovsk. The production of the gas compressor units on the basis was created in the machine-building plant in Sumy. All this chain of transformation was completed in 2.5 years…
He always travelled to solve any problems appearing during the construction of the gas and chemical complex in Orenburg, during the drilling in Medvezhiye deposit in the north of Tyumen region or in Shatlykskoye deposit in Turkmenistan. He achived that Kosygin himself and other state leaders visited the deposits…
Orudzhev believed that people are the main capital at any institutions. He invested in his workers, in their training and education, organizing special colleges in the main gas extracting regions. He opened a branch of Gubkin Moscow oil and gas institute in Orenburg, developed industrial institutes in Tyumen and Ukhta. Sabit Orudzhev turned the development of the gas industry in an innovative process that was target at the constant technological update of the extracting, drilling, transporting and processing equipment.
Sabit Orudzhev got famous not only as a state figure with great authority but also as an expert in offshore extraction of hydrocarbons. Orudzhev support the large-scale offshore extractions. He created a special department for the exploring and development of the sea deposits of oil and gas. He did a good job in creating a base for sea exploration in the Caspian, Black and Barents Sea. The discovery of the huge Stockmann deposit of condensed gas in the Barents Sea is to a large extent the result of this activity in the exploration of the offshore hydrocarbons deposits”.
Sabit Orudzhev died in 1981. He was buried on the Novodevichiye cemetery, and the name of the scientist-minister was given to an industrial plant in Urengoy, an embankment in Nadym and a street in Baku, his hometown. 30 years after his death the experts still value his contribution to the formation of the gas industry.
