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

According to OIL, the ERD (extended reach drilling) technology can drill at a depth of 3,500-4,000 metres without disturbing the surface. Unlike conventional drilling that breaks the land surface above the target, ERD reaches the necessary depth at a remote location before moving horizontally under the ground to reach the target.

Proposed by OIL and the Petroleum Ministry’s Directorate General of Hydrocarbon (DGH) last November, the purpose of the R&D project was to study the overground impact of the sub-surface ERD technology and “resolve the impasse” following the denial of clearance by the FAC last August.

Throwing its weight behind the R&D proposal, the Environment Ministry’s premier research organisation Wildlife Institute to India (WII) also agreed that “the impact of the drilling on the above-ground biodiversity” can be studied “only after the actual drilling is done”.

On January 27, the R&D proposal was considered, bypassing the online submission route at the FAC meeting. Taking note that the WII had already been awarded the R&D project to be completed before the onset of the monsoon, the FAC cleared the project “without any commercial implications”.

While DG (Forests) Sushil Awasthi and WII director Virendra R Tiwari did not respond to queries on why the R&D study could not be undertaken in a less eco-sensitive area, a senior DGH official said that the study would cover different biogeographic zones and habitat types over the next five years so that site-specific recommendations can be made to mitigate any adverse effect in leveraging the benefits of the ERD technology.

A forest officer, who had served at Dibru Saikhowa National Park, cautioned: “Using ERD tech for the first time in India may sound like a futuristic solution for avoiding surface damage. But given our record on safety issues, imagine the impact of oil spills from these wells right under a river channel that joins the Brahmaputra barely 20 km downstream.”

Last August, the FAC rejected the proposal for drilling seven wells inside Dibru Saikhowa National Park using the ERD technology from three existing wells of the Baghjan oil field where a massive blowout caused extensive damages in 2020. The rejection was based on two Supreme Court orders and the Ministry’s guidelines.

In 2006, the Supreme Court ruled that no permission “by whatever name called” would be granted for mining inside national parks, sanctuaries and forest areas. In 2023, it extended the no-mining zone by one kilometre around the national parks and sanctuaries.

Meanwhile, in September 2023, based on a Standard Operating Procedure developed by the WII for using ERD near forest areas, the Environment Ministry exempted ERD projects from securing forest clearance, except inside national parks, sanctuaries and the surrounding eco-sensitive zones.

Following the rejection by the FAC, key Environment Ministry officials, the DGH, the OIL and the WII met last November to discuss the proposal for an R&D study at “four potential ERD well locations” which were “part of the larger 7-well ERD for which the forest clearance was rejected”.

Once the WII Director agreed that drilling was necessary to study its impact, the then Director General (Forest) of the Environment Ministry asked for a fresh proposal.

Subsequently, the Environment Ministry accepted the DGH’s request to consider the research project as a special case bypassing the online submission system since there was no R&D category in the Ministry’s Parivesh portal.