The letter was nothing more than a general, rough task for the GDR combines and factories that were to lay the over 500-kilometer-long section of pipeline from Kremenchuk in Ukraine to its western border, with everything else that went with it.
Who would supply the seamless pipes, where the heavy laying equipment would come from, who would do the earthwork and lay the route, the letter did not answer.
Along the pipeline, five compressor stations, each with six pressure compressors, were to be built at intervals of about 100 kilometers to ensure constant gas pressure in the long-distance pipeline. Who was to build, assemble and connect them to the pipeline route was not answered.
Houses, schools, and roads were to be built for the later operators. That’s where construction combines were needed. And, not to be forgotten: To successfully complete these vastly different tasks, highly skilled workers were needed who were willing to take on the rigors of months and, in some cases, years of foreign service.
So I had plenty to do until, after dozens of consultations with all kinds of companies and combines in the GDR, I was able to communicate the binding scope of work to my director: Our task included the assembly of the entire penstocks from the compressors in all five stations to their integration into the pipeline and my director was pleased.
A group of three was formed. We were given our own office and managed the complex assembly process from preparation to the functional handover of the route at the end of the seventies.
With today’s modern means of communication, organizing a major construction site abroad with constantly changing locations may seem like a perfectly normal task.
Back then, however, it was still a few decades before the Internet and satellite telephones. Back then, if we wanted to phone the site management to exchange essential information, we had to do it at night because the network was hopelessly overloaded during the day.
That’s why we had agreed on a certain day of the week as a telephone day. If there were any problems, the site manager could call the head office early in the morning.
Due to the time difference, this meant that a colleague had to keep a telephone watch from midnight at the latest, because we never knew when a usable telephone connection would be established.
Natural gas had already been flowing through the pipeline for several weeks when our Gazprom team received a Soviet medal with a certificate of honor and a cash award for its many years of successful performance.
The award was ceremoniously presented to us by two Soviet comrades at a modest ceremony at the combine director’s office. I must admit that I was a little proud, even though I had never seen the line. 𝓣𝓸 𝓑𝓮 𝓒𝓸𝓷𝓽𝓲𝓷𝓾𝓮𝓭…
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