New Delhi: After more than a fortnight of gas spewing out from an oil well in Assam’s Baghjan Oil Field, a massive fire broke out in the place on June 9. It resulted in the death of two firefighters, destroyed farmland and property, and caused massive damage to the environment.
In a Facebook post, a former senior employee of Oil India Limited, Chandan Baruah, who had worked with the company for 30 years, attempted to breakdown the incident:
I worked for more than three decades in OIL , Duliajan, Assam as a gynecologist in the medical department. During that period, many of my friends were drilling engineers. We were very close and their children were born in my hands. Those young drilling engineers used to tell us about their work and I was really fascinated to hear about their experiences at the drilling site. After becoming the Head of the Medical Dept, I used to attend many technical meetings and discussions and learned lots of things about drilling and production of oil. Though I am from the medical profession, I could gather little knowledge of how an oil industry functions. This write up is basically for my friends who are ignorant about oil industries and those from various cities of India and abroad.
Baghjan is about 17 km from Doomdooma town in Tinsukia district, Assam. Oil India Ltd, an oil giant and a Navaratna company was drilling a well at Baghjan which led to a massive blowout at around 1:45 pm on 27th May. Natural gas and oil particles began to gush out uncontrollably from the blow out site at very high pressure and speed. The drillers already drilled up to 3000 metres, when suddenly the blow out took place. Now just imagine sending a pipe up to 3 km inside the earth. It is not an easy job, they have to cut through large layers of hard rock.
Fearing the well will catch fire, OIL management shifted more than 1600 people to a safer place. In the meantime, engineers from ONGC and OIL tried to stop the leak but the conditions around the site were not at all favorable. Then on 9th June, suddenly a massive fire broke out engulfing nearby places also. Producing oil ( technically called hydrocarbons) is a very risky business. Though rare, blowout happens in the oil industry all over the world. Blowout is the worst thing that can happen to an oil industry. ONGC offshore rig ( drilling inside the sea bed), 160 km from Mumbai had a massive blowout in 2005, another blow out at Rudrasagar, Sivsagar of a well belonging to ONGC, a blow out at Dikom, Dibrugarh district in the year 2005 when OIL drilled a well, are few examples. During Dikom blowout, global experts were brought in to contain the blowout which took 45 days. So Baghjan is the second blowout for OIL after a long 15 years.
In the entire world, no drilling or exploration company has experts to deal with such a massive blowout. In fact, there are only three companies in this world to deal with this type of blowout and experts from one of the companies called Alert ( Singapore) have reached Duliajan. In the meantime, OIL arranged to bring those three experts from Singapore but due to strict travel restrictions by the Singapore government (not Indian govt) due Covid 19 pandemic, it took some time for the 3 experts to reach Duliajan, the field headquarter of OIL. They will try to cap the leak. It is a very difficult and risky job to put the cap, which
is several tonnes in weight, to place it in place to seal the leak as there is a towering inferno going on. It will also require huge amount of water for which OIL is making necessary arrangements. There are other ways also to control it, like making another blowout in the well or another tunnel so that some of the pressure can be diverted. But the saddest part is that two firefighters have already lost their lives while trying to control the fire.
The cause of blow out maybe machinery failure or human error. These are very sophisticated and costly machinery but sometimes they can fail. This happens not only in oil industries, but in aircraft, ships and even spaceship. We all know about how an Indian spaceship failed at the last moment last year. Proper investigation will tell us how the blowout happened and the investigation is already going on. Two drilling engineers have already been suspended.
This type of blowout can cause huge financial loss to a company. Besides, sometimes it has serious effects on the natural surroundings. As Baghjan is located near the Dibru Saikhowa forest, where a large number of animals, birds and some endangered species live, it can change the ecology of the region. It is not possible now to find out the extent of damage, but experts are working on it. It will take several years, to be normal again. There are also spillage of crude oil into nearby water resources which may create problems. This massive fire also engulfed several houses of the nearby village. But because of the intensity of the heat from the fire is so high, it is not possible to visit the area to find out the damage or the number of houses damaged in the fire.
Experts will control the fire and seal the leak probably in a month or so. But rehabilitation of affected people will be the biggest challenge for OIL. Probably it will take months or years for normal life to return for the people of that region. Let us unite together and pray so that this massive disaster comes to an end soon, but the search for the liquid gold (oil) will continue all over the world because without oil the world comes to a standstill.
Also read: Assam’s oil well leak failed to create viral visuals like Vizag gas leak did