http://www.transneft.ru/About/Histor...LANG=EN&ID=241
After 1941 the oil industry was adapting to the war conditions. The battle front and the home front required fuel, and it was needed to: firstly, give the maximum increase to oil extraction in the traditional oil areas, and secondly, to get the maximum and fastest oil extraction rates in the new oil fields, especially between the Volga and the Ural, but also in the East.
Oil from Sakhalin was delivered to the mainland via water transport and then by trains to refineries. Already at the start of the war it was decided to build Okha - Sofiysk oil pipeline, 325 mm diameter and 368 km long, whereas 9 km had to be laid at the bottom of the Tatar strait. Later on, in 1946, this pipeline extended to Komsomolsk-on-Amur and its total length grew to 655 km. During the oil pipeline construction a technique was used, where pipes, filled with water, were freely submerged from the ice.
The fascist troops advancing in the Caucasian direction caused enormous damage to the Soviet oil industry in the south. In 1942, oil fields in the Krasnodar Territory were entirely put out of production, oil extraction in the Grozny area reduced by half. Those were especially hard times for the Southern oil fields. Having destroyed the main line which connected Baku with the center of the country, the fascists blocked the Volga River and took hold of the Armavir - Trudovaj pipeline. During winter of 1942 - 1943, oil products from the Caucasus were delivered to the central regions of the country by a long route - through Middle Asia and Kazakhstan. The transport could not cope with moving-out oil products. A few million tons of them transported from Baku oil storages were kept in hollow mountains. Later, the stock was used to feed the front and the rear. Astrakhan - Urbakh - Saratov kerosene pipeline and Kizlyar - Astrakhan railroad which were built in 1943 played an important role. The pipeline construction under the order of the State Defense Committee, started in April 1941. The construction was carried out despite constant enemy air raids. To cover the pipe, reinforcement and equipment shortage, it was necessary to dismantle the Baku - Batumi-2 oil pipeline, part of the Grozny - Tuapse oil pipeline, and 60-km transit of Kosh - Armavir. Pipes and equipment were urgently moved to the construction site. Almost all work was done manually, including arc-welding of the pipe joints. The total length of the water passages was 11.2 km. A 655-km kerosene pipeline with eight pumping stations was built within unprecedented short periods: from April to November 1943. Construction of the railroad Kizlyar - Astrakhan and the kerosene pipeline Astrakhan - Urbach - Saratov allowed to carry out at Astrakhan tank farms new transshipping activities using other kinds of transport.
Particular place in the pipeline transport history belongs to the benzene piping on the bottom of the Ladoga Lake. This pipeline helped the Leningrad citizen to survive through the blockade. The State Defense Committee decided to start the pipeline construction in April 1942. The works were done by the Narkomstroi OSMCh-104 and the Baltic marine force EPRON. Pipes for the pipeline were taken from the stock of Izhora plant. The project was designed under time pressure, and many assemblies and components were built following drafts. The benzene pipeline, 102 mm in diameter and 29 km long, was laid on the lake bottom up to 35 m deep. It was constructed within 43 days - from the 5 May through 16 June 1942. Two pump stations were built on the eastern bank of the lake, while tanks and a loading rack were built on the western bank. The pipeline was annually supplying Leningrad with 400-600 tons of fuel. Overall, 47.4 thousand tons of the fuel was delivered - 32.7 thousand tons in 1942, and 14.7 thousand tons in 1943. The benzene pipeline operated without failures for over twenty months and was disabled after removal of the blockade.
During the war there were successfully used mountable-and-dismountable portable pipelines. They not only supplied the troops with fuel, but also helped to force crossings over water barriers. So, in the spring of 1942, upon the Oka a metal, mountable-and-dismountable, 75-mm pipeline was mounted. It supplied with fuel the troops of the 61st Bryansk Front Army. In a part of the Leningrad front, across the Volkhov River, the similar 75-mm pipeline was laid. In March of 1943, 100-mm pipeline was laid across the Don that was used as a part of the railroad bridge, because the bridge was destroyed. It transported from one bank to the other 700 tons of fuel daily. The 2.72 km long pipeline, laid in the spring of 1944 near the Lots-Kamensky railroad bridge over the Dnepr, was used in the same way. In November 1944, mountable-and-dismountable pipelines were put across the Danube, and in winter 1945 also across the Vistula. The 100-mm and 225 km long mountable-and dismountable pipeline which was laid in January 1945 can be regarded as a trunk pipeline. Its throughput was 40 m3 per hour, and it delivered the fuel from the Ploeshti region, Romania, to the transfer tank farm in Reni, the USSR. The fuel was loaded into tank cars and sent to the front. Special units were maintaining the pipeline. During the war, mountable-and-dismountable pipelines were used for various purposes. They helped to successfully carry out large-scale battle operations. The oil pipeline Zolny - Yablonevy - Syzran also was put into operation during the war.
On the whole, from 1941 to 1945 the USSR built 1,264 km of trunk oil and oil product pipelines. However, it is impossible to figure out the precise length of the trunk pipeline network at that time, because the Baku - Batumi pipeline, for example, was entirely dismantled.
The study of the pipeline transport as of 1917 to 1945 shows that the throughput of specific trunk oil pipelines was not completely used. Of course, some oil pipelines, such as the Caucasian, showed lower performance during the war time (see the table that shows actual figures of oil pipeline utilization, check the site for this). Other pipelines, such as Okha - Sofia, were in the initial operation phase. The older ones were in no better position. For example, from the very beginning of the operation only one third of the capacity of the oil pipeline Guriev - Orsk, built in 1934, was utilized, and by 1945 only 27 % of its throughput was used. This was caused by the slow development of the Emba deposit and a significant delay in developing refinery capacities in Orsk. A good example could be the history of Makhachkala - Grozny oil pipeline. Built in 1936, it was underused since the early operational days - the flow of homogeneous oil was inadequate. During the war its operation was suspended, its returning into production delayed, and by 1945 its usage was only 20 %. At the same time, the railroad line Makhachkala - Grozny was overloaded.
This was due to the facts that the overall oil fields development plan was inadequately elaborated, the rate and scale of field development was unfounded, refinery capacity, such as that of Baku - Batumi oil pipeline, was insufficient. In addition, the pipeline capacities were underestimated, especially in the war time. This resulted in slow recovery of destroyed pipelines. Poor technical equipment and unprepared provision for alternate transportation of various oils and oil products via the same pipeline also had negative impact on pipeline usage. Using trains for oil transit was considered the best.