ON a sticky wicket

New Delhi, Jan. 21: While things are looking up for ONGC in Assam with a fresh discovery in the Karanpur block, officials are worried over the deteriorating law and order situation in the state. They fear that this could hamper the company’s operations.

A senior company official told The Telegraph, “We did not expect that there would be such a sharp deterioration in the law and order situation in Assam. It is unfortunate as ONGC officials have to operate in remote areas where they would be vulnerable.”

The survey teams of upstream oil companies, ONGC and OIL, which have to operate in small groups, cannot move around freely in such a situation. This would be a handicap in developing the existing fields and undertaking fresh exploration activities.

Similarly, the logistics chain has to be maintained over a long distance, and dense forests add to the danger under such circumstances.

He said, “The Karanpura find is a good one and oil has been struck in the upper layers of the block. However, it is too early to estimate the reserves as more wells have to be drilled over a wider area of the block to find whether the seismic data holds good.”

But given the current law and order situation, this could be delayed. Even otherwise, getting environmental clearances and acquiring forest land to drill oil also takes time.

“It could take about a year or so to drill another two wells in the block provided the law and order situation improves,” he said.

ONGC had drawn up a Rs 3,300-crore warchest for oil exploration and production in the state. The ageing oilfields in Assam had thrown up a challenge for the oil companies to introduce new techniques to enhance oil recovery and make fresh discoveries as well. But now a question mark has arisen over whether work can proceed at the same expected pace.

Crude output from Assam oilfields has been stagnating at around 5 million tonnes and is not sufficient to meet the requirements of the refineries which have a processing capacity of 7 million tonnes.