Fire in a gas and oil well devastates Assam’s wildlife
A gas well on fire poses an existential threat to Assam’s Dibru-Saikhowa National Park
ASMOKE MUSHROOM hangs over Assam’s DibruSaikhowa National Park. A gas well on the edge of the park that had been billowing methane and crude oil uncontrollably for the past two weeks caught fire in the afternoon of June 9. Within hours, the inferno spread to over a kilometre forcing residents of nearby villages to run for their lives. Four people have been injured and about 50 houses burnt as the fire continues to rage. The smoke will cause severe and long-term damage to the ecology of the world’s only riverine island wildlife reserve and the Brahmaputra, Lohit and
Dibru rivers that surround it (see ‘What’s at risk’ on
The fire broke out “while clearing operations were on”, says a June 9 press release by Oil India Limited (OIL), the public sector company that operates the well located in Baghjan village of Tinsukia district. The company undertakes oil and gas extraction and exploratory operations in 23 wells around Baghjan (see ‘A question of priority’ on p19).
The blowout, or an uncontrollable release of natural gas, had occurred on May 27 during drilling operations to access an untapped reservoir at the well named Baghjan 5. “They
were trying to drill a layer apart from where gas was originally found,” OIL spokesperson Tridib Hazarika told Down To Earth (DTE). At around 10:30 am on May 27, the workers sensed an oncoming blast of natural gas and evacuated the well. Within minutes the blast occurred and was heard by people living 10 km away. “Fire tenders and police officials reached the spot after two hours. The well spewed dark plumes of oil and gas,” says Niranta Gohain, an environmentalist based in Natun Rongagora village, a kilometre from the gas well. OIL technicians with the help
of fire tenders had formed an umbrella of water over the well (see photo above) to prevent the gas from catching fire. As per an assessment by OIL in 2017, the underground reserves are primarily of methane, an inflammable gas.
The district administration has set up three relief camps where about 3,000 people evacuated from four villages in the area have been sheltered. “If floods and coronavirus were not enough, this blast has thrown us out of our houses, damaged our crops and killed our livestock. New crops will not grow for a long time,” says Labanya
Saikia of Baghjan village who was stationed at the Dighal Tarang High School along with 500 families. Riju Chandra Moran, whose family of six depends on a small tea garden, betel nuts and paddy, has completely lost his farm. It is all covered under a layer of oil and gas condensates, he says.
The oil and gas released from the well has travelled with the wind to settle on the Brahmaputra, Lohit and the Dibru rivers. Park authorities recovered carcass of a young Gangetic dolphin and dead livestock on the wetland two days after the leak. People have reported burning eyes and sore throat.
THE BLOWOUT
On the day of the blowout, OIL
technicians at the site and private contractors from Ahmedabadbased John Energy Limited, who had been hired to drill, were conducting “workover” operations. These refer to invasive procedures to determine the future of the well, and blowouts during these operations are not uncommon. “During workover operations blow-out preventers (BOP) are removed. They are reinstalled after the operations. In this case, however, the team present on the site did not get enough time to re-install the BOPs,” Hazarika says. Gohain counters by saying that as per the conditions stated in environmental clearance (EC) accorded in 2011 to OIL’s six drilling wells in Mechaki area in Dibrugarh, about 30 km from Baghjan, BOPS
should be installed all the time during the drilling operations. Why was this not followed? On May 31, OIL has served a show-cause notice to John Energy Ltd.
There are doubts even about OIL’s EC for Baghjan. “After the dolphin carcass was recovered, we
wanted to go through the EC and the environmental impact assessment and contacted OIL, but we haven’t received them,” R S Bhati, district forest officer, told DTE. On June 7, the forest department has constituted a 14-member committee to probe the issue.
Even when OIL had set up wells in 2003-06, they did so without public consent, alleges Kamal Baruah, a resident of Baghjan. “They bought the land clandestinely and set up the wells in close proximity to the National Park which will now kill people and animals,” Baruah says.
Baruah’s assertion echoes with the National Board of Wildlife (NBWL) team that inspected the oil pipelines near Dibru-Saikhowa National Park in 2013. M D Madhusudan and Prerna Singh Bindra, the then members of the Standing Committee for NBWL wrote in their report: “We strongly disapprove of the current trend of presenting the standing committee of NBWL with fait accompli situations and seeking post-facto clearances for projects on which work has already been undertaken without the requisite prior permissions. The expenditure thus incurred, in this case, from the public exchequer puts undue and unfair pressure on the standing committee of NBWL to ratify violations of wildlife and environmental norms.”
Even the notification to demarcate the eco-sensitive zone—a buffer between the National Park and
THE DISTRICT ADMINISTRATION HAS SET UP THREE RELIEF CAMPS WHERE ABOUT 3,000 PEOPLE EVACUATED FROM FOUR VILLAGES HAVE BEEN SHELTERED
surrounding areas—from the forest department has only come this January and has been kept 0 km to 8.7 km. Strangely, the buffer is 0 km at Baghjan—the wells are right on the bank of the river.
NEW TECH TO BLAME?
OIL has been operating in the area since 2001. It currently extracts natural gas from 23 wells in Baghjan, as per a proposal document released in 2016, and plans to use three of these wells— Baghjan 3, 5 and 11—to undertake exploratory operations underneath the National Park using extended reach drilling (ERD) technology (see ‘A question of priority’). Just a week before the blowout, on May 20, the company issued a press release stating that it did not foresee any disturbance to the environment though it was undertaking drilling operations right underneath the National Park because it
was using ERD technology. The drilling will be done 1.5 km from the National Park and will be at a depth of over 3.9 km. A day earlier, on May 19, the company had announced that it had received EC from the Union Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change to use ERD at seven locations under the park.
Hazarika say this is the first time ERD will be used to drill oil in India. The total reserve is 10 million tonnes and OIL claims that it will be able to tap three million tonnes from under the Natural Park. “We plan to start operations within one and a half years,” says Hazarika.
Activists believe otherwise. “We think OIL has already started the work on ERD from Baghjan 5. They have begun work on drilling underneath the park,” says Gohain.
The project now faces stiff resistance from the people. MoranMotok tribal communities, who dominate the area, are threatening to launch an agitation. There is a social media campaign across Assam to save the habitat of endangered species. “We are trying to get legal help. We want to question the poorly demarcated eco-sensitive zone which has been notified without any consultation. We want OIL to stop all drilling in the vicinity of the park,” says Gohain.DTE