The blaze at Baghjan

The Baghjan incident must be considered one of the worst industrial disasters the country has witnessed in recent times. First there was a major blowout in a gas well on May 27. The gas leak had affected over 1,600 families in all, apart from causing irreparable damage to the Dibru-Saikhowa National Park on whose fringe the leakage had occurred. The well-head caught fire on June 9, leading to an unimaginable situation. The fire has already damaged houses and belongings of scores of residents of the adjoining villages. At least two young fire-fighters have laid down their lives while putting in their best effort to control the inferno. What has come as a big surprise is the inability of the entire oil industry of the country to do anything but remain a silent spectator as the gas leak continued. It is also a matter of surprise that such a private drilling company was engaged to explore hydrocarbon which reportedly does not possess any facility to meet any emergency situation. It is a matter of concern that the 120-year-old petroleum industry of the country does not have any mechanism to tackle such a situation. That the entire disaster mitigation mechanism of the country – including the much-hyped National Disaster Management Authority – has also remained a mute spectator as the well at Baghjan burns. The Union Minister for Petroleum and Natural Gas should have ideally rushed to the spot to take stock of the situation. The Prime Minister, who has been briefed in detail on the situation by Assam Chief Minister Sarbananda Sonowal, should have also by now directed the Petroleum Minister to rush to Baghjan. What is also beginning to turn out to be a major issue is the question of why oil and gas exploration wells have to be set up so close to, if not inside, a National Park. The same question has been already agitating the minds of right-thinking people in the matter of unabated extraction of coal by another PSU, that being Coal India Ltd, in the immediate vicinity of the Dehing-Patkai Rainforest not very far from Dibru-Saikhowa National Park. Who were the people who had given environment clearance to these exploration sites? What were the assurances that the state government had extracted from the two PSUs insofar as emergency back-up in the event of major accidents are concerned? Or, was it so that the state government had kept its eyes and ears closed and preferred not to look at the safety and emergency aspects because these are central PSUs? Immediately after the gas leak incident in Visakhapatnam last month, Andhra Pradesh has discovered that many oil wells in the Krishna-Godavari Basin did not have fire NOC; is it the same in Assam too?