“If the gas pipeline would be built, we lose”: transcript of Reagan's speech at the US National Security Council Meeting on the Sanctions against Soviet Union

The object of this research is the declassified transcript of the US National Security Council Meeting of July 9, 1981, dedicated to introduction of the economic and political restrictions on building of the Soviet gas main pipeline. The subject of this research is the analysis information-bearing capabilities of the office documentation of the US National Security Council Meetings for conducting the scientific assessment of sanctions policy of the US government against the Soviet Union in the 1980s as part of directives on restricting the access of the Soviet Union to foreign markets. The article examines the published protocol the US National Security Council Meeting and related documents that contain information on creating the regime to impede the construction of the gas main pipeline to Europe. The novelty of lies in the fact that this article is first within the framework of historiographical analysis to study the plans of the US President R. Reagan on interruption of the active efforts of the Soviet Union to supply Western Europe with energy. Publication of the document clearly demonstrates that the ideas of restarting the trade-economic development of the Soviet Union were later implemented in other countries in the XXI century, when the Russian Nord Stream pipeline became one of the crucial vanguards within the system of control of the US national security interests in Europe. Based on the newly introduced documents from the foreign archives of the CIA, Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, materials of the US periodical press, and memoirs, the author explores the options prepared by the US agencies aimed at complete shutdown, and restriction of access of the participants of the Soviet-German gas pipeline deal to foreign markets and resources, as well as the response of business community to trade embargo with the USSR.

Risk-oriented approach to the issue of industrial safety and energy resource efficiency gas transport enterprises

Any gas-main pipeline presents a technological complex of objects that functions as a single system, where all objects of the gas-main pipeline are classified as hazardous facilities, for which most of the existing risks are typical. In order to maintain a gas-transport system in operational, standard and safe condition, it is necessary to perform repair (routine) work assuming replacement or repair of defective sections of the pipe (or other equipment). The methods which an operator of a gas-transport system uses today for ensuring safety of such repair (routine) work are either environmentally harmful (“bleed” of gas), or hazardous and inefficient by energy and/or resource (“bleed” of gas, gas utilization, increasing of pipeline bearing capacity, "overlaying-welding" of defects under pressure, etc.). With this scheme of technological process, level of working and environmental safety and energy-resource efficiency of gas-transport enterprises sharply decreases. The purpose of our research was to propose a risk-oriented approach to the problem of working safety and energy resource efficiency of the gas-transport enterprises. The only type of repair, with which operational (safe) state and resource of the pipeline system can be fully restored is replacement of defective pipe or its section. Therefore, at the stage of preparatory work, the most acute problem is discharge of natural gas from the local section of pipelines by means of its pumping-over (accumulation) instead of "bleeding" or "utilization". We propose a rational, effective and risk-oriented approach to the use of mobile compressor units for pumping over (evacuating) of natural gas as a method for improving working safety and energy efficiency of the gas-transport enterprises. The proposed approach allows the gas-transport companies to create quickly an automated risk management system and reduce the risk level and, as a result, to improve working safety and energy efficiency of the processes of gas transportation.

The corrosion damage mechanisms of the gas pipelines in the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia)

The article provides examples of critical damage to a long-running gas pipeline on the territory of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia), which arose as a result of the development of corrosion processes, discusses the mechanisms and scenarios for the development of corrosion damage in the cryolithozone conditions. Considering the processes and mechanisms, they continue for a long period of time., an increase in the number of damages to a gas main pipeline due to corrosive degradation is expected in the near future. The stage of diffuse damage during long-term operation is confirmed by the increasing loss of working capacity due to corrosion damage in the last 25 years of the pipeline operation.

EFFICIENCY ASSESSMENT OF GAS MAIN PIPELINE GEOTECHNICAL MONITORING BY QUALITY OF PRODUCED DATA

Geotechnical monitoring results analysis of gas main pipeline’s lineal part accomplished based on JSC «Gaz-prom» data of 2011-2013 yr. Line damages classification and its evolution dynamic assessment are made taking into account reconstruction operations of sections with non-normative condition. Definition is made about geotechnical monitoring main deficiency, which is lowering the quality of produced data about object condition. It is offering to solve the row of science-technical problems for efficiency increase of geotechnical monitoring results proceeding methodic.