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Aviation History
1957
1957 - 0632.PDF
,*>*• r 636 PAKISTAN Patrolling a Gas Pipeline By CAPTAIN R. BRADBURY HQ 1, one of the booster stations on the 350-mile pipeline which brings natural gas from Sui to Karachi. The Hitler 360 maintains constant vigilance along the line. THE author of this article has had considerable experience of bothhelicopter flying and crop spraying; he began the former during his war-time R.A.F. service and after demobilization spent eight years inagricultural aviation in the United States. Now one of the senior pilots of Fison-Airwork, Ltd., he is at present engaged on their banana-spraying contract in Jamaica. RECENTLY a team of archaeologists unearthed MahenjaDaro—a town in West Pakistan built around 3000 B.C. and• steeped in the mystery of an ancient world where once the sabre-toothed tiger lorded it over an impenetrable tropical jungle. Five thousand years has worked immeasurable changes in West Pakistan. The encroachment of the Sind desert has buried those immense forests under a scorching plateau of sand. Man, too, has changed; it is hard to believe that the natives of today are descended from the men who built the mosques at Lahore and the Taj Mahal and equipped Mahenja Daro, 3000 years before Christ, with adequate drainage, irrigation and cooling facilities. They are less inventive now, more resigned. In this ancient land, two years ago, a Fison-Airwork helicopter landed and the wind from its rotor blew the roof off an old man's straw house. When the dust settled and he could see again, he gathered the tattered matting together and carefully put the roof back. Then the helicopter took off, and once more the pieces of matting were strewn across the rice paddy. One day the helicopter made three visits and the old man re-made his roof six times. He did not complain; but he did see that the whirring blades were a danger to the villagers who ran eager and excited to the scene. He also saw how futile were the efforts of the pilot to keep the people away. So, armed with an immense stick, he became a self-appointed helicopter choukedar (guard). This new machine might destroy his roof, but it could also provide him with an unique job. One day he was taken up in it, so that later that night, over the charcoals, he was a man of importance able to recount how it was to have a bird's-eye view of one's roofless living-room. The little straw house is no longer there, but the old man is. A small repeater station for the Sui-Karachi natural-gas pipeline was erected, and the house had to make room for a small heliport. The old man was made official station choukedar and lives in a small company bungalow with a concrete roof, handsomely finished in white. Numerous similar local tales and anecdotes coloured the build- ing of the 350-mile Sui-Karachi pipeline. Now it is finished and buried beneath the ground and the gas is being pumped smoothly down it; and just as the work of running it never ends, so the stories have become part of the local folklore. The search for oil had brought the Burmah Oil Company to Pakistan some years before. Beginning their drilling at Sui, 350 miles north east of Karachi, in the hills above the upper Sind frontier, they found mat the oil had gone, but that it had left a legacy in the subterranean vaults over 10,000ft below the surface —gas. It is hard to estimate how much gas there is there; but it is • believed that if all the power-driven industrial plants of West Pakistan were converted to Sui gas, there would be enough to last for at least a hundred years. The Sui-Gas Transmission Company was set up, a purification plant erected at the source, and a pipeline laid connecting it with Karachi and all the intermediary towns remarkably quickly. The first slug of gas emerged in Karachi in September 1955; within a few months the line was fully operational and consumers began to convert from oil to gas. Problems had now to be overcome in running the line and protecting it across the desert, swampland and heavily irrigated rice areas. Keeping it under observation presented the serious problem of easy access to the whole long route, for the engineers had to be able to get quickly to any spot, in order to make an adjustment, effect a repair, or just have a good look. Sui-Gas decided there was only one vehicle capable of doing this in all seasons—the helicopter. Accordingly they called upon Fison-Airwork of Bourn, England; and for almost two years one of their Hiller 360s has steadily been patrolling the line. Along the route from Sui to Karachi are regulating and radio booster stations and at these the helicopter stops to check con- ditions, deliver mail or supplies and transport engineers on constant observation tours. Some of these stations are very lonely—remote bases of civilization in the desert, where veget- ables and flowers are carefully nurtured beside the bungalows, and a few chickens and pets kept. There is always a cup of tea for the helicopter pilot. The pipeline itself is largely buried about four feet below ground, except where it crosses the Indus or a large canal, when it is supported by a metal bridge or existing dam. It is sixteen inches in diameter and is usually loaded to about 800 Ib/sq in pressure. The gas is highly combustible, being more than 90 per cent methane, so considerable vigilance must be maintained along the route and great care exercised when making repairs or adjustments. Pakistan is reputedly the hottest country in the world, and during the summer the thermometer soars to 135 degrees. Last year the cockpit canopy of the helicopter warped like a tulip leaf. [concluded at foot of page 639 Seen from the Fison- Airwork Hiller: con- struction work in progress on a bar- rage across the Indus. The barrage will help to irrigate the surrounding countryside and will also serve to carry across the river the gas-pipeline exten- sion now being laid between Sui and Multon, Pakistan.
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