ONGC to conduct safety audit of oil pipelines; hire agency to spread awareness among people living near oil installations

CHENNAI:

After the leak in Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) pipeline in
Kathiramangalam Villlage near Thanjavur district set off a protest
that crossed 60 days, officials are now planning to hire an agency to
spread awareness on safety for people living near oil installations.

Addressing a press conference, Ved Prakash Mahawar, director (onshore)
ONGC along with DD Mishra, director (Human Resources), Kulbir Singh,
executive director (asset manager) and T Rajendran, deputy general
manager, Geology, and Basin Manager (Cauvery), said the agency will
spread awareness about the safety mechanism during a leak in the
pipeline.

Officials said that ONGC would also conduct an audit of the 9.5km
leaked pipeline, which is only seven to eight years old. Dismissing
concerns over the quality of pipeline, Mahawar said that some of the
pipelines are functioning well despite being 50 years old. “The leak
could be due to stress on the pipe while extracting the oil. We are
looking at it,” he said.

Initially, officials dismissed the leak as a minor one, but the delay
in plugging it due to protest by local villagers led to leakage of
2,000 litres of oil into the paddy field. Oil spills on agricultural
locations or grasslands have the effect of choking off plant life. If
a spill occurs in these environments, the highest response priorities
are to prevent oil from leaching into groundwater or entering
waterways as run-off, and to return the soil to productive use as
quickly as possible. At Kathiramangalam, the ONGC is still studying
the impact of the spill.

When prodded on the lack of safety mechanism and awareness among
people in case of a fire following a major leakage of oil in and
around the villages, the officials were in the dark about it. “We
conduct in-house mock drill every month,” they said. But when queried
whether such safety drill are being conducted in and around
Kathiramangalam village annually where in such oil installations are
located, the officials failed to offer a proper response.

This is not the first leakage of oil from the pipeline. There had been
a earlier incident in Tiruvarur also in 2009. However, the report on
Tiruvarur oil leak has not been made public.

Meanwhile, officials cautioned the people not to be misled by rumours
and misinformation campaigns about ground water getting polluted. “A
total of 36 lakh acres is cultivable land in Cauvery basin of which
ONGC is carrying out work in 16,000 acres which is 0.04 per cent of
the land utilised,” said the officials.

Thanks to the oil exploration in the area, Tamil Nadu is getting a
royalty of Rs 2,824 crore in the last seven years and 750 mega watt of
power, officials said.


Factfile:

--- There are 13,000 oil wells in India of which 7,000 are under
operation. In Tamil Nadu, there are a total of 700 oil wells of which
183 are operational.

--- TN is getting royalty of Rs 2,288 crore during the last seven years

--- Oil exploration is happening in 1,600 acres of land. A total of 36
lakh acres of land is cultivable in the Cauery belt region

--- ONGC to restore land affected by leakage. Top soil will be
replaced with fresh soil and adequate compensation will be paid

--- The land required for drilling of one well ranges from four to
five acres taken on lease. A total of rs 63,000 paid for paddy growing
land per acre per annum, Rs 72,000 per acre per annum for commercial
crop