Notes of an old refiner

From the 17th the som is 8.40 to the dollar. Before it was 5 from 1993, fifteen years. My pension did not change: it is the same number of som. Only now the som is smaller.

My neighbour says: it is for the export, for NurGaz, so the oil is cheaper to sell. Maybe. I am a technical person, I understand: if you change the scale on the manometer, the pressure stays the same. But the pension is not pressure. It is buckwheat and medicine.

Medicine is in dollars. I will plant more potatoes this year.

Today a long post for the technical people, others may skip.

The refinery in Kobozev was built in the late fifties, and in 1974 they expanded it. I was there as a young senior operator when they brought in the new catalytic cracking unit: a tower the height of a ten-floor house, the reactor, the regenerator, and the pipes that I knew by heart afterwards, like the veins of my own hand. The commissioning team was from Baku and Moscow. They said it will take three months to bring the unit to the full load. We did it in five weeks, because the shift of Nikolai Stepanovich did not go home. The chief of the plant, I remember, brought us tea in the thermoses himself at four in the morning.

What is cracking? Simple version: the heavy oil is a long chain, like a long wooden train. At 500 degrees with the catalyst powder the train breaks into small wagons, and these small wagons are gasoline. A good shift engineer feels the unit with the soles of his shoes. If the floor trembles in a certain way, you go to the panel before the alarm.

In my 20 years as a shift engineer I had two serious incidents and no one was hurt. I am proud of that more than of the medals.

"A refinery does not forgive, but it also does not forget the good." (Nikolai Stepanovich, 1975)

A quiet New Year's eve. The shops in our street have been half empty since the summer, but Lyudmila found a chicken and a jar of the green peas, and the tangerines came from somebody's cousin. We have light now, with only two cuts this week, one hour each. I counted. It is a habit of a shift engineer: everything is written in the log.

This year was not an easy one for anybody in the country, and I will not write about it. It is in the log and the log stays in the drawer. I only say thank you to the neighbours who shared the coal in the autumn and to the doctor who came to the house at night in October.

Happy New Year, whoever reads. Health first. The rest we will arrange.

Dima came on Sunday as he promised. Lesson one: the mouse. It has two buttons, left and right, and I must not press both together "like a pianist". Lesson two: the "Back" arrow. This is the best invention after the valve, because everything that I do wrong can be undone.

Lyudmila watched from the door with her arms crossed. At the end she asked what is the use of it. I said, I will write to the whole world. She said, the whole world is not waiting. Maybe so. But the counter shows 11 visitors already, and I know only three of them.

Good day. Today is the 7th of November. In our time this was a holiday: the demonstration on Lenin square, the band of the refinery, my Lyudmila with red carnation. Now it is an ordinary Wednesday. So it is a good day to begin something new.

My grandson Dima made me this "blog". He says I can write anything and people will read it. I said, who will read an old man? He said, other old men. We will see.

Introduction: I was shift engineer at the refinery 38 years. I know how to make gasoline from crude oil. I do not know how to put a photograph here. Dima will teach.