DIBRUGARH, June 15 - Well control and final fire killing, which are going to be quite a long drawn out process, are progressing as scheduled at the Baghjan oilwell disaster site, with the roaring inferno burning in full blast, as if in a grim reminder to the disaster managers and workers.
A team from the Army�s Corps of Engineers today went to work at Baghjan to construct a 150 metre long bridge over a water body adjacent to the Maguri Beel. This structure will be used to deploy fire dousing equipment. The Army engineers have started their work since this morning. The soldiers were pressed into service at the special request of the Tinsukia DC, Bhaskar Pegu.
Meanwhile, Assam Industry Minister Chandra Mohan Patowary, accompanied the OIL Chairman and Managing Director, Sushil Chandra Mishra, to hand over cheques of Rs 30 lakh each to the wives of the deceased OIL firefighters, Tikheswar Gohain and Durlov Gogoi, under the Company�s social security scheme. The OIL team and the accompanying political leaders went to the residences of the two at Namrup and Chabua to hand over the cheques. The DCs and SPs of Dibrugarh and Tinsukia also went with the team. The two firemen died fighting the flames at Baghjan last Tuesday.
An OIL press statement issued today claimed that testing of one of the two high-discharge water pumps of capacity 2500 gallons per minute, to be used for well control operation, was completed today. Testing of the other pump is in progress. The civil work of digging of the second CMT water reservoir (Capacity 12000 KL � 12 crore litres)) near the kill pump area to accommodate more volume of water is also in progress.
Civil work for development of debris lay down, bunk house placement and kill pump area is in progress.
Placement of additional water pump at water pump station at Dangori river bank has been completed and testing of the same is in progress.
The fabrication job of Heat Shields required for reducing heat hazards to working personnel at site is in progress at OIL�s Engineering Workshop at Duliajan.
Officers and men of the 14 Assam Regiment of the Army is operating a medical camp for the residents of Bandarkhati Relief Camp.
On oil and gas daily production losses, the OIL statement said that as of end of day figures of Sunday (June 14), various agitation programmes in the Tinsukia district caused a production loss of 487 metric tonnes of Crude Oil and 0.45 MMSCM (four lakh fifty thousand cubic metres) of Natural Gas has been logged. Cumulative production loss since May 27 due to bandhs and blockades now totals 5386 metric tonnes of Crude oil, 7.04 MMSCM (seventy lakh four thousand cubic metres) of natural gas.
Five Broadband Seismographs will be deployed by CSIR-NEIST, Jorhat (better known as RRL) at five recording sites for data to be recorded tentatively for 7-10 days. Locations have been identified and preliminary civil work for deployment of the instruments is in progress. These are to record the land vibrations the locals are complaining of, at Baghjan, and examine the source of the tremors.
A team from TERI, Delhi will be monitoring the air and noise quality around the Baghjan oilwell BGN-5 from Tuesday. They will also measure the Lower Explosive Limit (LEL) of the escaping gas, to figure out the fire avoidance parameters, as BGN-5 is spewing the highly imflammable gas condensates, which is keeping the inferno fuelled.
