GUWAHATI: A massive fire broke out at the site of “blowout” – or uncontrolled emission of natural gas – in Assam’s Tinsukia district on Tuesday.
Soon after the incident at Baghjan Oil Well No 5 of Oil India Limited (OIL) at around 1:40 pm, plumes of smoke and flames enveloped the sky in the area.
The OIL said a firefighter from the Oil & Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) sustained minor injuries.
“While the clearing operations were on at the well site, the well caught fire. There is no casualty reported. Fire tenders are at the site controlling the spread of fire. Once the situation is normal, the experts will move to the site,” the oil exploration major tweeted.
After the inferno, the locals staged a “violent protest” which made the OIL to request the authorities on the maintenance of law and order so that the experts could enter the site and begin the well control operations. All officials of OIL and ONGC were being evacuated from nearby areas.
The OIL on Sunday had flown in three experts from Singapore-based firm, M/s Alert Disaster Control, to cap the blowout. After being briefed by OIL’s senior officials, the trio had left for the site on Monday.
The OIL said emergency meetings were underway with the experts from Singapore.
“They have expressed that it is now a safe environment for working and are confident that the situation can be controlled and the well can be capped safely. The situation demands arrangement of large quantities of water, installation of high discharge pumps and removal of debris. All the operations, as per ALERT, will take about 4 weeks. Efforts will be made to reduce this timeframe as much as possible,” the OIL said.
Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal called up Petroleum Minister Dharmendra Pradhan and apprised him of the incident. Sonowal instructed the Tinsukia district administration to take adequate measures to ensure safety to the lives and property of people living in nearby villages.
The CM appealed to Defence Minister Rajnath Singh to deploy the Indian Air Force in dousing the fire at the blowout site. He said apart from OIL, ONGC, and state government, personnel from Army, NDRF and paramilitary forces were taking steps to secure the lives of the locals.
The blowout had occurred on May 27. An incident like this is rare. During a similar blowout in 2005 at Dikom in Dibrugarh district, experts had to be flown in from abroad to control a blaze at an abandoned oil well. The situation could be brought under control 45 days later.
Environmentalist lodges FIR
Meanwhile, an environmentalist filed an FIR with the police in connection with the blowout.
Apurba Ballav Goswami, who is also a journalist, cited in his FIR that during drilling on May 27 by M/s John Energy Pvt Limited, a Gujarat-based company to which the OIL had outsourced operations, there was an explosion in the oil well resulting in the region getting polluted by the emission of “toxic” gas and oily substances.
He claimed the incident had occurred as drilling was done in the absence of experts from OIL and “blowout preventive arrangements”. He said the OIL itself had mentioned in a press statement that drilling was done without using “blowout preventive arrangements”.
Goswami held OIL Chairman and Managing Director Sushil Chandra Mishra and the officers from OIL on duty and M/s John Energy Pvt Limited responsible for the incident.
“Due to their act vis-à-vis the blowout, flora and fauna, ponds and livestock in the area have suffered massive damage. The incident displaced 2,500 people from 650 families who are taking shelter in relief camps,” Goswami said.
He claimed several endangered animals, including river dolphins and fish, died. He also made mention of media reports about the deaths of five people and the sufferings of locals from diseases such as fever, cough etc in the “toxic” environment.
The Tinsukia district administration had on Sunday said a preliminary investigation revealed one of the deceased was suffering from tuberculosis since 2019, another from a liver disease and the third was a patient of epilepsy who had drowned. The fourth was a woman from a village in the vicinity who died in Dibrugarh and had not visited the village in recent times. The district administration ordered a magisterial probe into the deaths following a request by the OIL.