Catastrophic Fire Fury In Baghjan Oil Well Is Still Raging After Five Months: Assam

Tinsukia district, Assam:

Baghjan oil well No. 5 in Tinsukia district of Assam still continues to rage the fire storm even after five months. Oil India Limited has previously attempted to cease the fire, yet their attempts have only highlighted out their crass decisions. The fire seemed to have been “under control” only to rage again with increased intensity.

Social media has been swarming with photographs and videos of the wild fire at the Baghjan oil well and the protests for the same. The fire fury has resulted in massive loss to environment and wildlife besides causing devastating losses to lands of the nearby habitation. Yet the protests plea and the victim’s voices rarely initiate a political wave.

The Baghjan oil well fire started out with a blowout on May 27 this year taxing three people for their lives. The blowout site is adjacent to the Dibru Saikhowa National Park (DSNP) in Tinsukia district.

The oil well has been burning for 160 days now, taking May 27 is taken as the initial date. Yet the explosive fire unfolded on June 9 of this year, still making the fire fury last for 150 days so far. This unfortunate record for the country still remains the longest in India.

Previously in the 1960s, an oil well fire in the Sibsagar district of Assam took 90 collective days to contain. A similar fire breakout caused by a blowout at Pasarlapudi in the East Godavari district of Andhra Pradesh in 1995 ingested 65 days to calm. In Assam again, a fire at the Dikom oil well in Dibrugarh district, in 2005 which the neighbours Tinsukia, took about 45 days to be put off completely.

The OIL hired experts and made several grand attempts to extinguish the fire in the blazing oil well. Yet they landed no results. The teams from ONGC and OIL also jointly attempted to douse the fire.

Singapore-based Alert Disaster Control, an expert group, then offered support to contain the fire and attenuate the adversities reaching the well and environment. The efforts much like the initial attempts by OIL could bear no fruits.

The learned experts then tried to deviate the direction of the leaking natural gas. The possible logic accounting their actions was the lack of fuel could never result in such troubling fire. Unfortunately, this tactic achieved as grandiose a failure as the previous attempts to sink the fire in the oil well.

The experts finally tried injecting “killing fluid” into the well. The process which was reportedly aborted in the late September this year, due to the casing valve rupture.

Now, the oil company is following a procedure called “snubbing” in yet another attempt to contain the fire.

Snubbing is a heavy oil well intervention process and used to extinguish fire.The officials now hope to cease the furious fire by mid- November.

OIL has formally stated that they have displaced 12 families due to loss of home. The families are also compensated with an amount of rupees 25 lakh along with a monthly livelihood support of Rs 50,000

Assam-based NGO, the Wildlife and Environment Conservation Organization, approached the NGT, the environment tribunal set up a committee in the light of the disastrous fire.

Now, a committee collected by the efforts of National Green Tribunal (NGT) which is headed by the former SC judge, Justice AK Goel has reported that the Baghjan oil well and 26 others as they are still illegally operated in the grounds of Assam.

The body had set up a committee under the former judge BP Katakey to investigate and look into the fire incident at Baghjan in Assam. The Katakey committee has discovered that the oil wells did not have the required environmental clearance.

The Supreme Court had allowed the OIL to extract hydrocarbons from near the Dibru Saikhowa National Park (DSNP) in 2017. The court had instructed the company of a biodiversity impact assessment that must be practiced before commencing extraction of hydrocarbons.

The Katakey committee in its status report accused the OIL for not following the conditional approval given by the Supreme Court. The Panel also reported the company for not approaching the Supreme Court seeking clearance for extraction activities in the vicinity of the Dibru Saikhowa National Park (DSNP). Final report by the Katakey committee is potentially due next month.