The Azeri engineer who built the Soviet gas industry into the world's largest
Landing on the bare tundra at the future Urengoy site in 1973, Orudzhev declared: "I am not Peter the Great, but I will borrow his words: here a city shall be built." From that moment, Novy Urengoy — Russia's 'gas capital' — was born.
An Azeri engineer from a Baku working-class family who built the Soviet gas industry into the world's largest. As Minister of the Gas Industry from 1972, he developed the West Siberian supergiant fields of Urengoy and Medvezhye and created the Unified Gas Supply System (ЕСГ), which remains the backbone of Russian gas power today.
Career Timeline
- 1936–1939Mechanic then production master, Ordzhonikidzeneft Trust, Baku
- 1939–1946Manager then director of trusts under Azneft, Baku
- 1946–1949Chief Engineer, Krasnodarneft; Head, Aznefterazvedka
- 1949–1955Head of Main Directorates, USSR Ministry of Oil Industry
- 1955–1957Deputy Minister of Oil Industry, USSR
- 1957–1959Chairman of Sovnarkhoz, Dep. Chair of Council of Ministers, Azerbaijan SSR
- 1965–1972First Deputy Minister of Oil-Extracting Industry, USSR
- 1972–1981Minister of the Gas Industry, USSR
Engineer-Scientist: Technical Innovations
Before he was an administrator, Orudzhev was a field-trained engineer. In his 1943 kandidat dissertation he formalized the aeration method for deep oil wells, published as a monograph, and demonstrated air-injection reservoir-pressure maintenance at the Krasnodar fields. In the late 1940s, working with Yusif Safarov, he co-designed and patented a deepwater large-block prefabricated foundation for offshore drilling platforms, an assembly-and-submersion method without precedent worldwide, which became his doctoral dissertation (1962) and the technological breakthrough for Soviet offshore oil development in the Caspian.
His engineering achievements earned him two Stalin Prizes (1950, third class; 1951, first class, for offshore field discovery and development) and the Lenin Prize (1970, for high-efficiency integrated technical solutions accelerating Tyumen oil output). As Minister of the Gas Industry from 1972, he fundamentally reoriented West Siberian gas-field development, replacing the existing model of multiple small gas-production units (5–7 billion m³/year each) with super-units of 25–30 billion m³/year. He set the 1,420 mm diameter / 75-atmosphere pipeline standard that remains the backbone of Russian trunk gas pipelines to this day. He also championed aircraft- and marine-derived high-capacity gas-pumping units (GPA) and the battery-cluster drilling method, which together increased drilling volumes more than tenfold between 1972 and 1980.