Holló Szilvia Andrea: Budapest's Public Works - Our Budapest (Budapest, 2010)

Town gas from coal - The Óbuda Gas Works (1913-84)

With the decentralisation of the gas works between 1952 and 1957, Óbuda (The Budapest Gas and Coke Works) retained gas production, while the Józsefváros plant was put in charge of distribution (the Budapest Gas Utility, the parent company of which the Gas Appliances Company was later to split off). In spite of continuous reconstruction, the aging of the ovens and the inferior quality of coal used led to extensive wear and tear in plants, which was exacerbated by technological units being left out of the modernisation process, and this caused technical hitches with an increasing frequency. As production rates were kept unnaturally high, the quality of town gas deteriorated with sulphide contents rising, pipes being blocked up and meters breaking down. Although the calorific value of the gas produced was raised in order that production could be reduced, this necessitated raising the price of gas sold. To even out peaks in demand related to industrial-scale gas consumption, a circular pipeline connecting corporate users had been built around Budapest by 1964.

The new head unit was no longer the Óbuda plant but the newly opened Kőbánya Gas Works, where the first air-operated natural gas processing plants were opened in 1966. The worn-out mains system was now beginning to stall and when production reached a daily output of 3.5 million cubic metres, it was obvious that manufacture based on the conventional method of coal gasification could no longer be increased. An urgent change was called for. In 1970 the Hungarian government approved a developmental project relying on natural gas arriving from the Soviet city of Orenburg in the Urals, as well as on domestic reserves. Thus began the experimental programme of switching to natural gas first introduced in the Rómaipart region in the north and then gradually extended in the direction of the city boundaries. Lasting from 1971 to 1988, the comprehensive transfer involved the piecemeal replacement of oakum sealing - which the natural gas would have dried out easily — with rubber at every alignment, and the resetting of as many as 933,000 appliances. The cast-iron pipes were replaced with ones first made of steel, later of polyethylene, the cheapness of which was meant to encourage locally-financed pipeline laying.

Rendered now superfluous, the Óbuda plant was slated for permanent closure in 1980; this, however, was postponed until 15 October 1984, as the coke produced here was needed for a while longer. Remaining the longest in operation were the air-operated natural gas processing units, but these, too, were closed down on 6 April 1987. Production was terminated in the Kőbánya Gas Works, and in the summer of 1988 the Albertfalva plant also went out of operation. A smaller part of the Óbuda facility was sold by Budapest in the late 1990s as a site for the construction of office and

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