Hunt for oil in Brahmaputra hits roadblocks
Nov 22, 2006 - 5:16:39 PM
, Reviewed by: Priya Saxena
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'Assam accounts for nearly 50 percent of India's on-shore crude oil production and has the highest success ratio in the world with 70 percent of the exploration sites yielding oil', the OIL official said.
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By Syed Zarir Hussain, Indo-Asian News Service,
[RxPG] Guwahati, Nov 22 (IANS) India's plans to dig the Brahmaputra river to hunt for new crude oil reserves has hit new roadblocks with several influential pressure groups as well as a separatist outfit in Assam opposing the move.
The state-owned Oil India Ltd (OIL) made a whopping $22 million agreement with the Kazakhstan Caspi Shelf, a Kazakhstan based oil exploration firm, to conduct a 2-D seismic survey along a 175 km stretch of the Brahmaputra in Assam.
The survey was scheduled to begin this month with the expected completion time of about two years.
A senior OIL official said the project is now unlikely to take off as scheduled with the company yet to get environmental clearance from the union ministry of environment and forests.
'We are trying for the clearance, but then it seems the entire project might get delayed for various reasons,' the OIL official told IANS over the phone from the company's headquarters in Duliajan in eastern Assam.
The proposed move to carry out oil exploration in the Brahmaputra has been strongly opposed.
'We shall not allow any kind of exploration work in the Brahmaputra as it would lead to extensive pollution,' said Samujjal Bhattacharyya, adviser of the All Assam Students Union (AASU).
Joining the protests is the outlawed United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA), the Asom Jatiyatabadi Yuva Chattra Parishad, a radical student group, and several environmental and rights groups.
'The Indian government has for long been exploiting Assam's natural resources and now it plans to extract oil from the Brahmaputra. This is nothing but another clever attempt to take away local resources at the cost of our people,' the ULFA said in a statement, adding it would not allow any exploration work in the riverbed.
The 2,906-km river -- one of the longest in Asia -- traverses Tibet, India and Bangladesh before emptying into the Bay of Bengal.
India produces about 30 million tonnes of crude oil annually, with Assam accounting for about five million tonnes of the total.
OIL, with its headquarters in Assam, produces about 3.2 million tonnes of crude in the state annually.
'This is a proven oil rich zone and we are confident of striking crude along the Brahmaputra once exploration work begins after the survey. The idea is to increase production and it is the state that is going to be benefited in terms of oil additional oil royalty,' OIL Chairman Mulkh Raj Pasrija said.
Assam has over 1.3 billion tonnes of crude oil and 156 billion cubic meters of natural gas reserves of which about 58 percent of hydrocarbon reserves are yet to be explored.
'Assam accounts for nearly 50 percent of India's on-shore crude oil production and has the highest success ratio in the world with 70 percent of the exploration sites yielding oil', the OIL official said.
Assam is home to the world's oldest operating oil refinery, the Digboi Refinery, established in 1901.
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