Guwahati, July 1: While congratulating the crisis management team belonging to the Oil and Natural Gas Corporation Limited (ONGC) along with three foreign well-control experts for the successful capping of crude oil well 147A under Rudrasagar oilfield on 27 June, All Assam Engineer’s Association (AAEA) urged the state-sponsored Maharatna company to announce adequate compensation to the affected villagers, who had to abandon their home places for two weeks because of the high pressure gas blowout. The forum of graduate engineers based in northeast India raised a pertinent question, how many days the largest Indian crude oil and natural gas company need to declare its compensatory package to over 330 Asomiya families, who used to live surrounding the concerned well and needed to be evacuated for avoiding any adversity.
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ONGC’s New Delhi-based corporate communications had earlier admitted that ‘during service operations on 12 June, a blowout occurred at Well RDS#147A, and gas gushed out’. After 16 days of relentless initiative, the team of experts successfully capped the well effectively bringing an end to the gas discharge. ‘This marks the successful culmination of the capping operation, a testament to ONGC’s engineering excellence, meticulous planning, and strong collaboration with global and local partners’, added the ONGC statement claiming that the capping operation was ‘executed with utmost safety, without a single injury, fatality, or incident of fire’. ONGC claimed to maintain full transparency throughout the operation, issuing daily press releases over the fortnight to keep all stakeholders informed and committed to uphold the ‘highest standards of safety, environmental responsibility, and operational excellence’ in every phase of the mission.
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Assam government chief Himanta Biswa Sarma, while visiting the site on 16 June and interacting with the local people taking shelter in a relief camp, announced an aid of Rs 25,000 from the CM’s relief fund per family, affected by the blowout. He communicated with Union petroleum and natural gas minister Hardeep Singh Puri and also met ONGC chairman Arun Kumar Singh, where Singh reportedly assured adequate compensation to the affected people in the locality. The engineer’s forum asked the ONGC management why it was delaying in announcing the due compensation. Is it because the concerned well was managed by a private firm named SK Petro Services (probably under a compromised mechanism to declare the well dry-old one) and hence the ONGC wants to avoid the accountability, questioned AAEA president Er Kailash Sarma, its working president Er Nava J Thakuria and secretary Er Inamul Hye.
(Nava Thakuria is a senior Indian journalist who contributes to various media outlets including print and digital platforms of India and across the world.)