August Narmada oil spill opens a can of worms

Last month, news reports about an oil spill from a company pipeline in Narmada river near Bhadbhut in Bharuch raised concerns over the alarming fact that no immediate mechanism was available with the companies concerned or the government agencies responsible for disaster management to contain such a spill. Finally, the coast guard had to be called in to advice on how to contain the spill.

A month later, the spill may have been taken care of, however, what it left behind emerges to be way more serious and deep rooted and in fact a veritable time-bomb ticking under the river bed.

The last week of August saw heavy rainfall, due to which Narmada river swelled, resulting in some erosion on the shore. Swayed by the heavy tide, multiple pipelines passing at various depths below the water surface, started clashing against each other and at least a couple of them belonging to GAIL and ONGC developed leaks.

According to a local activist MSH Sheikh, the explosion was so powerful that tremor and shock waves were felt by Bhadbhut villages 3 km away from the site. Technical experts were horrified when they realized on close inspection that the real problem is the distance at which the gas and oil pipelines were laid.

“We realised pipelines of six different oil and gas pipelines are placed in very close proximity under the river bed. This disaster happened because of high tide due to flooding in the river. The pipelines started ramming against each other and some ruptured; there was an explosion of gas and oil spilled into the river from the ONGC pipeline. What if this was not under water? What if this was close to human habitation? The explosion could be powerful enough to damage entire villages,” says a highly placed govt official.

“Such sites are sitting ducks for major disasters. This is a blatant violation of industrial safety norms,” the official further  said, who is keen to provide the perspective but apprehensive about being quoted.

Immediately after the oil spill incident, the pipelines were shut down. “Even as the inspections and inquiries are on, industries in Ankleshwar are now bringing pressure on state government authorities to restart the pipelines,” Sheikh told dna.

Bharuch collector, Avantika Singh and GPCB member secretary Hardik Shah, however, refused to comment on any pressure being brought on them to restart the pipelines as also on the distance at which the pipelines are laid from each other. Other GPCB sources, however, confirmed the layout of the pipelines was illegal and a source of concern.

“The ONGC pipeline was dead (nonfunctional). The oil spill is overrated. At the most the dead pipeline could have contained 2,000 litres of oil. As per the Coast Guard’s directives, the boats were asked to undertake manual churning and the oil spill has been controlled. There is no question of restarting a dead pipeline,” Shah said. As for the distance of the pipelines, Shah insists as multiple agencies are involved in granting permissions, due diligence must have been done at the time.

An activist from the region, Sheikh runs an organization called Brackish Water Research Centre based in Surat. He has written a letter to Union minister of petroleum and natural gas, Veerappa Moily, bringing the incident and associated lapses to his notice and has sought an inquiry.

ONGC’s in-charge corporate commutation official of Ankleshwar asset Somnath Chowdhury also sought to underplay the oil spill. “It is not clear if there was any oil spill at all. No physical damage was observed to our pipeline when we conducted a survey after the incident. A dispersant chemical was procured from the Mumbai asset and kept in standby within three days of the spill. The force of the tide was unprecedented. There ought to be a distance of 15-20 mtrs between two pipelines, which every company when they seek multiple permissions from various government agencies are asked to maintain,” he insisted.

Sheikh in his letter is however very critical. “To save expenditure all the companies came together at one spot where the river has lowest riverbed violating safety laws and sidelining the domino effect in case of a blast, explosion, leakage or fire in any one of the pipelines. It needs to be investigated how such gas pipelines were given permissions of laying down inside riverbed in just 7 feet parallel area? How engineering plans were passed of different companies at the disaster site in 50 meters?” the letter says.