Told it can’t drill in a national park, Oil India Limited turns it into a research project

According to OIL, the ERD (extended scope drilling) exertion tin drill astatine a extent of 3,500-4,000 metres without disturbing the surface. Unlike accepted drilling that breaks the onshore aboveground supra the target, ERD reaches the indispensable extent astatine a distant determination earlier moving horizontally nether the crushed to scope the target.

Proposed by OIL and the Petroleum Ministry’s Directorate General of Hydrocarbon (DGH) past November, the intent of the R&D task was to survey the overground interaction of the sub-surface ERD exertion and “resolve the impasse” pursuing the denial of clearance by the FAC past August.

Throwing its value down the R&D proposal, the Environment Ministry’s premier probe organisation Wildlife Institute to India (WII) besides agreed that “the interaction of the drilling connected the above-ground biodiversity” tin beryllium studied “only aft the existent drilling is done”.

On January 27, the R&D connection was considered, bypassing the online submission way astatine the FAC meeting. Taking enactment that the WII had already been awarded the R&D task to beryllium completed earlier the onset of the monsoon, the FAC cleared the task “without immoderate commercialized implications”.

While DG (Forests) Sushil Awasthi and WII manager Virendra R Tiwari did not respond to queries connected wherefore the R&D survey could not beryllium undertaken successful a little eco-sensitive area, a elder DGH authoritative said that the survey would screen antithetic biogeographic zones and situation types implicit the adjacent 5 years truthful that site-specific recommendations tin beryllium made to mitigate immoderate adverse effect successful leveraging the benefits of the ERD technology.

A wood officer, who had served astatine Dibru Saikhowa National Park, cautioned: “Using ERD tech for the archetypal clip successful India whitethorn dependable similar a futuristic solution for avoiding aboveground damage. But fixed our grounds connected information issues, ideate the interaction of lipid spills from these wells close nether a stream transmission that joins the Brahmaputra hardly 20 km downstream.”

Last August, the FAC rejected the connection for drilling 7 wells wrong Dibru Saikhowa National Park utilizing the ERD exertion from 3 existing wells of the Baghjan lipid tract wherever a monolithic blowout caused extended damages successful 2020. The rejection was based connected 2 Supreme Court orders and the Ministry’s guidelines.

In 2006, the Supreme Court ruled that nary support “by immoderate sanction called” would beryllium granted for mining wrong nationalist parks, sanctuaries and wood areas. In 2023, it extended the no-mining portion by 1 kilometre astir the nationalist parks and sanctuaries.

Meanwhile, successful September 2023, based connected a Standard Operating Procedure developed by the WII for utilizing ERD adjacent wood areas, the Environment Ministry exempted ERD projects from securing wood clearance, but wrong nationalist parks, sanctuaries and the surrounding eco-sensitive zones.

Following the rejection by the FAC, cardinal Environment Ministry officials, the DGH, the OIL and the WII met past November to sermon the connection for an R&D survey astatine “four imaginable ERD good locations” which were “part of the larger 7-well ERD for which the wood clearance was rejected”.

Once the WII Director agreed that drilling was indispensable to survey its impact, the past Director General (Forest) of the Environment Ministry asked for a caller proposal.

Subsequently, the Environment Ministry accepted the DGH’s petition to see the probe task arsenic a peculiar lawsuit bypassing the online submission strategy since determination was nary R&D class successful the Ministry’s Parivesh portal.