sixty degrees fifty minutes north, seventy-six degrees forty minutes east. The site is listed as a POL refinery. The thermal source is not, repeat not moving. We have a KH-11 pass close to the source in two-zero minutes. My preliminary evaluation, General, is that we have a major oil-field fire here.'
'They're not doing a laser-flash on your bird?' CINC-NORAD asked. There was always a possibility the Soviets were trying to play games with their satellite.
'Negative. The light source covers infrared and all of the visible spectrum, not, repeat not, monochromatic. We'll know more in a few minutes, sir. So far everything is consistent with a massive ground fire.'
Thirty minutes later they were sure. The KH-11 reconnaissance satellite came over the horizon close enough for all of its eight television cameras to catalog the chaos. A side-link transmitted the signal to a geosynchronous communications satellite, and Burnette was able to watch it all 'in real time.' Live and in color. The fire had already engulfed half of the refinery complex and more than half of the nearby production field, with more burning crude oil spreading from the ruptured pipeline onto the river Ob'. They were able to watch the fire spread, the flames carried rapidly before a forty-knot surface wind. Smoke obscured much of the area on visible light, but infrared sensors penetrated it to show many heat sources that could only be vast pools of oil products burning intensely on the ground. Burnette's sergeant was from east Texas, and had worked as a boy in the oil fields. He keyed up daylight photographs of the site and compared them with the adjacent visual display to determine what parts of the refinery had already ignited.
'Goddamn, Colonel.' The sergeant shook his head reverently. He spoke with quiet expertise. 'The refinery- well, it's gone, sir. That fire'll spread in front of that wind, and ain't no way in hell they'll stop it. The refinery's gone, total loss, burn maybe three, four days-maybe a week, parts of it. And unless they find a way to stop it, looks like the production field is going to go, too, sir. By next pass, sir, it'll all be burnin', all those wellheads spillin' burnin' o'l… Lordy. I don't even think Red Adair would want any part of this job!'
'Nothing left of the refinery? Hmph.' Burnette watched a tape rerun of the Big Bird pass. 'It's their newest and biggest, ought to put a dent in their POL production while they rebuild that from scratch. And once they get those field fires put out, they'll have to rearrange their gas and diesel production quite a bit. I'll say one thing for Ivan. When he has an industrial accident, he doesn't screw around. A major inconvenience for our Russian friends, Sergeant.'
The analysis was confirmed the next day by the CIA, and the day after that by the British and French security services.
They were all wrong.
2. Odd Man In
DATE-TIME 01/31-06: 15 COPY 01 of 01 SOVIET FIRE
BC-Soviet Fire, Bjt, 1809 — FL-
Disastrous Fire Reported in Soviet Nizhnevartovsk Oil Field — FL-
EDS: Moved in advance for WEDNESDAY PMs — FL-
By William Blake — FC-
AP Military/Intelligence Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) 'The most serious oil field fire since the Mexico City disaster of 1984, or even the Texas City fire of 1947,' sundered the darkness in the central region of the Soviet Union today, according to military and intelligence sources in Washington.
The fire was detected by American 'National Technical Means,' a term that generally denotes reconnaissance satellites operated by the Central Intelligence Agency. CIA sources declined comment on the incident.
Sources in the Pentagon confirmed this report, noting that the energy given off by the fire was sufficient to cause a brief stir in the North American Aerospace Defense Command, which was concerned that the fire was a possible missile launch directed at the United States, or an attempt to blind American Early-Warning satellites with a laser or other ground-based device.
At no time, the source pointed out, was there any thought of increasing American alert levels, or of bringing American nuclear forces to higher states of readiness. 'It was all over in less than thirty minutes,' the source said.
No confirmation was received from the Russian news agency, TASS, but the Soviets rarely publish reports of such incidents.
The fact that American officials referred to two epic industrial accidents is an indication that many fatalities might result from this major fire. Defense sources were unwilling to speculate on the possibility of civilian casualties. The city of Nizhnevartovsk is bordered by the petroleum complex.
The Nizhnevartovsk oil production field accounts for roughly 31.3 percent of total Soviet crude oil, according to the American Petroleum Institute, and the adjacent, newly built Nizhnevartovsk refinery for approximately 17.3 percent of petroleum distillate production.
'Fortunately for them,' Donald Evans, a spokesman for the Institute explained, 'oil underground is pretty hard to burn, and you can expect the fire to burn itself out in a few days.' The refinery, however, depending on how much of it was involved, could be a major expense. 'When they go, they usually go pretty big,' Evans said. 'But the Russians have sufficient excess refining capacity to take up the slack, especially with all the work they've been doing at their Moscow complex.'
Evans was unable to speculate on the cause of the fire, saying, 'The climate could have something to do with it. We had a few problems in the Alaskan fields that took some careful work to solve. Beyond that, any refinery is a potential Disneyland for fire, and there simply is no substitute for intelligent, careful, well-trained crews to run them.'
This is the latest in a series of setbacks to the Soviet oil industry. It was admitted only last fall at the plenum of the Communist Party Central Committee that production goals in both the Eastern Siberian fields 'had not entirely fulfilled earlier hopes.'
This seemingly mild statement is being seen in Western circles as a stinging indictment of the policies of now-departed Petroleum Industry minister Zatyzhin, since replaced by Mikhail Sergetov, former chief of the Leningrad Party apparatus, regarded as a rising star in the Soviet Party. A technocrat with a background of engineering and Party work, Sergetov's task of reorganizing the Soviet oil industry is seen as a task that could last years.
AP-BA-01-31 0501EST — FL-
**END OF STORY**
Mikhail Eduardovich Sergetov never had a chance to read the wire service report. Summoned from his official dacha in the birch forests surrounding Moscow, he'd flown at once to Nizhnevartovsk and stayed for only ten hours before being recalled to make his report in Moscow. Three months on the job, he thought, sitting in the empty forward cabin of the IL-86 airliner, and this has to happen!
His two principal deputies, a pair of skilled young engineers, had been left behind and were trying even now to make sense of the chaos, to save what could be saved, as he reviewed his notes for the Politburo meeting later in the day. Three hundred men were known to have died fighting the fire, and, miraculously, fewer than two hundred citizens in the city of Nizhnevartovsk. That was unfortunate, but not a matter of great significance except insofar as those trained men killed would eventually have to be replaced by other trained men drawn from the staffs of other large refineries.
The refinery was almost totally destroyed. Reconstruction would take a minimum of two to three years, and would account for a sizable percentage of national steel pipe production, plus all the other specialty items unique to a facility of this type: Fifteen thousand million rubles. And how much of the special equipment would have to be purchased from foreign sources-how much precious hard currency and gold would be wasted?
And that was the good news.
