AAEA Demands Accountability for Abandoned Oil/Gas Well Operations
Guwahati: Expressing concern over the Sivasagar crude-oil well gas leakage for days, a northeast India-based forum of graduate engineers urged both Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) and Oil India Limited (OIL) to deal honestly with the abandoned wells. Both have the potential to harm human life, property and environment, where the concerned private parties often do not come to take responsibility.
All Assam Engineer's Association (AAEA), in a statement, also appealed to the Union government in New Delhi to help the concerned company officials held accountable for any disaster that takes place on a deserted oil/gas well after declaring it dried up.
Its apprehended that some corrupt ONGC and OIL officials continue declaring selected oil/gas wells as being old ones (meaning not feasible for drilling) so that private parties can be given the opportunity to drill and extract benefits with an understanding of sharing benefits with both the state-sponsored companies.
Is anyone monitoring the responsible officials after they declare a loaded oil/gas well as a dry one and then secretly deal with private parties for extraction for personal gains? said AAEA president Er Kailash Sarma, working president Er Nava J Thakuria and secretary Er Inamul Hye.
The Bhatiapar-Bari Chuk (Sivasagar) and 2020 Baghjan (Tinsukia) OIL well blow-out remind us of the same story where private parties were operating the well (after those were assumed not to be resourceful enough) and accidents took place. It means that no lessons have been learned on how to prevent such practices.
Shockingly, India as a nation still does not have an efficient response team to deal with disasters with such magnitudes, so the expert teams from Canada or the USA need to come to address the problems at the crucial moment, added the AAEA statement.
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