GUWAHATI: Oil exploration major Oil India Limited (OIL) has flown in 60 tonnes of equipment from Canada’s Calgary by an Antonov An-24, a transport aircraft, to “kill” its Baghjan well blowout in Assam’s Tinsukia district.
The consignment, shipped from Kolkata by road, reached the blowout site on Wednesday night. The flight had landed at the Kolkata airport about a fortnight ago.
According to a spokesman of the OIL, the blowout well will be killed by injecting artificial mud at high pressure. Once killed, the well will stop spewing natural gas.
“Now that the equipment has arrived, we have started the snubbing operation to kill the blowout well,” the OIL spokesman said, adding, “The experts are hoping to complete the operation within ten days but it will take about a month’s time to complete the entire abandonment process”.
The blowout – or uncontrolled emission of natural gas – had occurred on May 27 which was followed by a massive fire on June 9. The well’s length from the surface to the ‘payzone’ or gas reserve underground is around 3.5 km. The OIL has over 20 such wells at the Baghjan Oilfield.
The fire was controlled 110 days later by foreign experts. After early setbacks, they were able to divert part of the gas to two flaring pits and the rest to an EPS (early production system). This caused the fire to die out.
Meanwhile, a committee of experts, constituted by the National Green Tribunal, said the OIL did not have, till date, the required consent to establish or consent to operate to either carry out drilling and testing of hydrocarbons at the well.
“This indicates a serious and grave infraction against the statutory environmental safeguards, more particularly under Section 25 & 26 of the Water Act, Section 21 of the Air Act, the authorization under Rule 6 of the Hazardous Waste (Management, Handling and Trans-boundary Movement) Rules, 2016... This may, therefore, require scrutiny of all existing projects of OIL in the state of Assam to ascertain if they meet the mandatory requirements of obtaining consent/authorization under the aforesaid Acts and Rules,” the committee observed.