Assam govt orders probe as gas well fire rages on
The fire continued to rage at an Oil India Limited (OIL) well on Thursday in Assam’s Tinsukia amid fears of damage to the eco-sensitive area two days after it began even as the state government ordered a probe into the inferno while protests by angry residents over alleged inaction hit crude oil production in the state. The well caught fire on Tuesday and left two firefighters dead while authorities were trying to control a blowout, or uncontrolled release of gas when pressure systems fail, there since on May 27. Flames from the fire rose nearly 100 feet in the air at the well, which is located a kilometre from the Dibru Saikhowa National Park. The eco-sensitive Maguri Motapung wetland is just a few hundred metres away from the inferno site. Officials said additional chief secretary Maninder Singh will conduct the probe and submit a report within 15 days. “We want to probe how the blowout happened, and if there was an error which led to it and the fire,” Assam chief minister Sarbananda Sonowal said.
Student organisations staged a protest alleging mismanagement of the blowout and forced OIL to stop operations at three drilling locations and nine workover locations at eight places. Nearly 2,000 families, which were evacuated beyond a radius of 1.5 km from the well, were on Wednesday shifted further and housed in 12 relief camps. Residents of the area on Tuesday staged a protest near the site and blamed OIL for failing to control the blowout for two weeks. “OIL lost 467 metric tonne of crude oil production from 59 producing wells on June 10 due to blockade...,” OIL said in a statement.
John Energy, a Gujarat-based company, was conducting operations to produce gas from a new reservoir at a depth of 3,729 metres under OIL’S supervision when the blowout happened.
Several officials of the company as well as employees were absent when the blowout happened, people aware of the matter said. “The company is carrying out an internal inquiry and two officials responsible for the well have been suspended. The probe will reveal if they were responsible,” said OIL spokesperson Tridiv Hazarika. OIL said the fire spread to the nearby village and destroyed over 50 houses and many trees on Tuesday and Wednesday, but the spread was reduced on Thursday. “The extent of the fire has been contained to the well. Its spread to the nearby village has been contained. No flash fire is reported from the nearby areas,” it said in the statement. Assistant fire operators Durlov Gogoi, a former goalkeeper who represented Assam, and Tikheswar Gohain, 56, were found dead near the site on Wednesday. They were engaged in pumping water to prevent the gas and condensate from catching fire. The OIL statement said a team of experts from Alert Disaster Control, Singapore, a firm that specializes in controlling blowouts, was preparing to control the fire and plug the leak. OIL said the operation requires a large amount of water, installation of high discharge pumps, and removal of debris. All these could take nearly four weeks, it added.