Assam gas well ‘killed’, fire fully doused after over 5 months

Guwahati/Tinsukia, November 15

The damaged gas well at Baghjan in Assam was successfully ‘killed’ and the blaze was fully doused on Sunday after over five months of a blowout, Oil India said.

The worst industrial disaster of the Northeast took away the lives of three employees of the PSU major and injured several others.

The process to control the well by joint efforts of multiple teams, including foreign experts, also faced a series of setbacks.

“The well has been killed with brine solution and under control now. Fire has been doused completely,” Oil India Ltd (OIL) spokesperson Tridiv Hazarika said in a statement.

There is no pressure in the well now and it will be under observation over the next 24 hours to check if there is any amount of gas migration and pressure build-up, he added.

“Further operation to abandon the well is in progress,” Hazarika said, adding that experts from Singaporean firm Alert Disaster Control were actively engaged in the final operation to control the well.

The company’s Director (Exploration and Development) P Chandrasekaran, Director (Operations) PK Goswami and Resident Chief Executive DK Das visited the well site following the successful killing operation after 172 days of the blowout and held detailed discussions with the experts from Alert.

The well no 5 at Baghjan in the Tinsukia district was spewing gas uncontrollably since May 27 and it caught fire on June 9, killing two of OIL’s firefighters at the site.

On September 9, a 25-year old electrical engineer of the OIL lost his life due to high voltage electric shock when he was working at the well site.

On July 22, three foreign experts from the Alert Disaster Control, which was assisting OIL and ONGC experts in putting out the inferno, received burn injuries while they were removing a spool from the wellhead. --- PTI

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