Soyuz (pipeline)

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Construction Worker (1976)
Map of the different routes from Russia to Central Europe

Soyuz ( Russian Союз , international and Soyuz , translated German as a Union , Association or unit ; also route Orenburg-Western border of the Soviet Union called) is a natural gas pipeline , which is a stretch of parallel gas transmission pipelines ( pipelines ) that of Orenburg in Russia (on the border to Kazakhstan ) to Uzhhorod in Ukraine .

The route is used to carry gas from the rich deposits of the southern Urals region and Central Asia to Eastern Europe and from there via the Transgas pipeline to the west to Central and Western Europe .

history

In 1966, drilling in the Volga-Ural Basin about 30 kilometers south of Orenburg discovered one of the largest natural gas deposits in the world known at the time. In addition to gas, there are also gas condensate and crude oil in quantities worth building. The gas is particularly rich in helium , which made it worthwhile to build a separation plant to extract the precious noble gas. From 1971 the Orenburg gas field was developed by the state-Soviet gas industry, later Gazprom . By 1974, the production and processing in the Orenburg processing plant reached their full capacity.

The Soyuz pipeline was built between 1975 and 1979 as a joint project of the Comecon states with the aim of bringing together the “ socialist brother countries ” of the Soviet Union in the Warsaw Pact ( GDR , ČSSR , VR Poland , VR Bulgaria , VR Hungary ) and the western ones To supply Soviet republics (especially the Ukrainian SSR ) with natural gas. In return for the Soviet natural gas supply, the five aforementioned Comecon states undertook to participate in the construction of the route and to build around a fifth of the total route, i.e. 550 kilometers each, including the associated compressor stations, under their own direction. The section of the route, which was created by German workers from the former GDR and which is known under the name Druzhba ("friendship") , lies in the center of Ukraine. Particularly deserving workers received a medal of merit which was awarded by the Executive Committee of the Comecon States and minted by the Leningrad Mint (LMD).

After completion, the Soyuz route, in combination with the transgas route through Czechoslovakia that adjoins it to the west and was completed a few years earlier, was also used to deliver gas to Western Europe. This became possible because the Soviet Union had started negotiations with Western European countries (Italy, Austria, Federal Republic of Germany) on future gas supplies in the late 1960s, when the East-West conflict was entering a phase of relaxation. In return, these countries participated in the financing and / or provided urgently needed material and equipment for the construction of the pipelines in advance. The largest deal of this kind was agreed with the German-Soviet natural gas pipe contracts .

With the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, through which Ukraine and Kazakhstan became politically independent from Russia, the pipeline was divided between the countries: the Russian part remained in the hands of the previous operator Gazprom, the Ukrainian part fell under the control of the state- Ukrainian gas company Naftohas . The Kazakh gas company KazMunayGas and its subsidiary KazTransGas received a stake in the pipelines and facilities in the Russian-Kazakh border region from Gazprom.

From the turn of the millennium, increasing disputes developed between Russia and Ukraine over the price and reasonable remuneration that Ukraine should receive for the delivery or transit of Russian gas. The Russian-Ukrainian gas dispute culminated several times from 2005 onwards when the Ukrainian and / or the Russian side reduced or interrupted the delivery and transmission of gas. As a result, Russia endeavored to develop new alternative routes in order to be less dependent on the passage through Ukraine, which should be achieved in particular with the Nord Stream and South Stream pipelines .

In the meantime (as of 2012) over half of the reserves in the Orenburg deposit have been exploited; production has been declining since the 1990s. However, since new deposits have been and are being developed elsewhere to compensate, the gas from which is also routed via the Soyuz route, there is no end of the pipeline's operation in sight. From 2012, the pipeline will be modernized with the participation of German donors and plant construction companies.

course

Course of the Soyuz route with a few stations

The route has a total length of about 2,750 km, of which about 300 km runs through Kazakh, 1,600 km through Ukrainian and the rest through Russian territory. Along the route there are compressor stations for pressure increase at intervals of around 100 to 150 km . There are a total of 21 stations, 12 of them in Ukraine and two in Kazakhstan.

The Soyuz route begins at the processing plant near Orenburg. Here the integration of gas from the nearby gas field is done (about 30 km south of Orenburg) and the field Karachaganak (about 100 km south west of Orenburg, in Kazakhstan) and the transmission of gas from a field near Dombarowski (about 400 kilometers east of Orenburg ).

From Orenburg the route follows the Ural River in a westerly direction and crosses the Kazakh border behind the Alexejewka compressor station. From here the route runs past the city of Uralsk for about 300 km through Kazakhstan.

At Alexandrow Gai in Saratov Oblast , the route re-enters Russian territory. Here the route joins the Central Asia - Center (CAC) pipeline, which brings gas from the Central Asian, former Soviet republics of Turkmenistan , Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan towards the Russian economic center. This is followed by another distance of about 50 km without a station through Kazakhstan before the route east of Pallasovka again crosses the border to Russia. From here, past Antipowka and Frolowo , to the Russian-Ukrainian border , it goes over six compressor stations and a distance of around 600 km .

In the eastern Ukraine, near Novopskow and near Schebelinka , more gas is fed in from the gas deposits there and it is merged with smaller branches of the “ Brotherhood ” route from north-west Siberia . To the west of it, behind Kremenchuk , follows the above-mentioned section “Druzhba”, built by GDR workers, with compressor stations at Oleksandriwka , Talne and Hajssyn as far as Bar .

After the Soyuz route in the Dolyna region has merged with the main Brotherhood route and the southern branch of the Yamal-Europe route , the joint line reaches its destination near Uzhhorod on the Ukrainian-Slovakian border. Here it is handed over to the Transgas pipeline , which routes the gas via Slovakia and the Czech Republic to Austria, Germany and from there to other Western European countries.

literature

  • Friedrich Götz: Russia's Gas: Opportunity for Europe . Books on Demand, 2008, ISBN 978-3-8334-7454-5 ( limited preview in Google Book Search).
  • Jacopo Maria Pepe: The gas supply to Europe: The triangle EU - Russia - Ukraine between geopolitics, geo-economics and Securitization (=  Horizons 21 . Band 3 ). Universitätsverlag Potsdam, 2011, ISBN 978-3-86956-098-4 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Pepe 2011 (see literature), p. 107
  2. ^ A b Luis-Martín Krämer: The energy security of Europe in relation to natural gas and the effects of a cartel formation in the gas sector . Inaugural dissertation to obtain the doctoral degree from the Faculty of Economics and Social Sciences at the University of Cologne. Cologne 2011 ( online as PDF ).
  3. ↑ Katy Unger: The oil and natural gas deposits of the Russian table . Seminar paper. Institute for Geology of the TU Bergakademie Freiberg, Freiberg 1999 ( download as PDF ).
  4. ↑ a b c Harald Elsner et al .: The raw materials industry of the Russian Federation . Short study. Ed .: BGR Federal Institute for Geosciences and Raw Materials. BGR, Hanover February 2009 ( download as PDF ).
  5. ↑ About Gazprom / Subsidiary companies: Gazprom dobycha Orenburg (former Orenburggazprom). Gazprom , accessed February 19, 2013 .
  6. ↑ Götz 2008 (see literature)
  7. ^ Institute for World Economy and International Relations of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR, Institute for International Relations of the Academy for Political Science and Law of the GDR (ed.): Yearbook of international politics and economy . State Publishing House of the German Democratic Republic, Berlin 1980, p. 51 .
  8. ↑ LexiTV: The Great Adventure. (No longer available online.) Mdr.de , June 6, 2012, archived from the original on November 26, 2015 ; Retrieved February 19, 2013 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.mdr.de
  9. ^ Medal for the Construction of the Main Natural Gas Pipeline Soyuz, late 1970s. CollectRussia.com, accessed February 19, 2013 .
  10. ↑ Roland Götz: Russia's Energy Strategy and Europe's Energy Supply (=  SWP studies . 2004 / S 06). Science and Politics Foundation, Berlin March 2004 ( download as PDF ).
  11. ↑ Ukraine: Deutsche Bank finances pipeline modernization. OWC Verlag für Außenwirtschaft, December 13, 2012, accessed on February 19, 2013 .
  12. ↑ a b Naftogaz and Ferrostaal want to modernize the Ukrainian pipeline. OWC Verlag für Außenwirtschaft, July 12, 2012, accessed on February 19, 2013 .
  13. ^ Center for Global Energy Studies: Natural Gas Pipeline Map . Ed .: Energy Charter. October 2007 ( download as PDF ).
  14. ↑ a b Military History Research Office (Ed.): Natural gas reserves and pipelines in Central Asia . Map. MGFA, Potsdam ( download as PDF ).
  15. ^ Central Asia Center. (No longer available online.) Gazprom, archived from the original on February 8, 2013 ; Retrieved February 19, 2013 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.gazprom.com
  16. ↑ Energy industry 2009: Kazakhstan  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 1.8 MB) . Germany Trade and Invest @1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.gtai.de  
  17. ^ Major Gas Pipelines of the Former Soviet Union and Capacity of Export Pipelines. East European Gas Analysis (EEGA), November 25, 2011, accessed on February 17, 2013 .