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Battling blowout at a pure fuel nicely close to its “home” in japanese Assam, Oil India Limited (OIL) has resumed its operations off the Andaman Islands after almost three decades.
OIL, headquartered in Dibrugarh district’s Duliajan, final dealt with any exploration and manufacturing exercise off the islands within the Bay of Bengal within the Nineteen Eighties. The public sector ‘Navaratna’ firm resumed its seismic survey in its Andaman offshore blocks on October 8.
Seismic survey normally precedes all oil and fuel exploration exercise.
Oil and Natural Gas Corporation Limited, India’s largest exploration firm, had drilled six wells off the Andaman shores in the course of the 2013-14 fiscal with out industrial success or manufacturing.
“After 2014, we are the only company to venture into the Andaman waters for exploration activities. But while ONGC were in deep waters, we are getting into shallow waters with a sophisticated multipurpose data acquisition vessel,” an OIL spokesperson mentioned.
He added that oil exploration (*3*) as a lot of the prolific class A areas have been explored.
The Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas had awarded 32 blocks beneath the Open Acreage Licensing Policy (OALP) via two rounds of bidding in January and February, 2019. OIL received bids for 12 blocks, together with two overlaying an space of 9,616.7 sq km in shallow waters off the shores of Andaman Islands.
“We have drawn up plans to intensify our exploration efforts in the country and increase exploration capital expenditures in the coming years,” OIL Chairman and Managing Director Sushil Chandra Mishra mentioned.
Among the initiatives is knowledge acquisition in Mahanadi on-land blocks in Odisha that might be began quickly, adopted by exploration drilling marketing campaign in its OALP blocks from the 2021-22 fiscal.
OIL expects to drill 66 wells throughout its OALP blocks inside the subsequent 4 years, officers mentioned.
Killing operation on
For OIL, the efforts to “kill” the blowout nicely at Baghjan in Tinsukia district proceed. ‘Killing’ means injecting a viscous cement fluid into the affected nicely at nice velocity to be able to stop pure fuel from popping out.
On September 13, overseas and OIL’s consultants tamed the flame atop Well No. 5 by diverting the fuel outflow to flare pits. The nicely had a blowout on May 27 and burst into flames on June 9.
The fuel diversion approach is short-term.
OIL has additionally been in a authorized tangle over the permission it was granted to drill for oil and pure fuel within the Dibru-Saikhowa National Park near the Baghjan blowout nicely. On May 11, the Centre gave OIL environmental clearance for prolonged drilling and testing of hydrocarbons at seven places inside the 340 sq km park, a biosphere reserve identified for its feral horses and avifauna.
The listening to of the case at Gauhati High Court is on October 20.
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