The gas and oil minister who made the USSR the world's largest gas producer
Reassigned from Gas to Oil Minister in 1985, he told a colleague: "All the same, in my soul I'm a gas man. Nothing to be done about it."
Born into an ethnic Bulgarian peasant family, Dinkov served as a reconnaissance scout in the Great Patriotic War and afterwards chaired a kolkhoz in Krasnodar. Graduating from the Azerbaijan Industrial Institute, he rose from oilfield engineer to Minister of the Gas Industry in 1981. He tripled gas output and completed the Urengoy–Pomary–Uzhgorod transcontinental pipeline (4,450 km), linking Siberian fields to Western Europe. Shifted to Oil Industry Minister in 1985, he oversaw the USSR's peak crude production of 624 million tons in 1988, still the highest annual output of any single country. After retirement he served on the Gazprom board, guiding the gas industry through its market transition.
Career Timeline
- 1942–1947Red Army reconnaissance scout, Great Patriotic War
- 1947–1954Kolkhoz chairman in Krasnodar; graduated Azerbaijan Industrial Institute
- 1954–1962Engineer at Krasnodarneft and Abinneft oil administrations
- 1962–1965Head of Krasnodar Main Gas Pipelines → first General Director of Kubangazprom
- 1966–1970Head of Glavgazdobycha, Ministry of the Gas Industry of the USSR
- 1970–1981Deputy Minister → First Deputy Minister of the Gas Industry of the USSR
- 1981–1985Minister of the Gas Industry of the USSR
- 1985–1989Minister of the Oil Industry of the USSR
- 1979–1989Deputy of the USSR Supreme Soviet (Turkmen SSR)
- 1986–1990Member of the CPSU Central Committee