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American, Russian experts rejuvenating ageing Indian oilfields
Monday, 14 July 2003, 19:30 IST |
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GUWAHATI: A team of American and Russian geologists are helping India rejuvenate its ageing oilfields to boost the country's sagging crude production, officials said.
The state-owned Oil India Limited (OIL), one of India's premier oil exploration firms, has engaged the overseas experts for carrying out enhanced oil recovery techniques in Assam.
"The American and Russian experts are working to revitalise the ageing oil wells with some very advanced technology," M. Bhandari, OIL general manager in-charge of drilling operations, told IANS.
"The main focus now is to arrest the decline in oil production and hence our efforts at enhanced oil recovery measures."
OIL, operating in Assam since 1953, produces about three million tonnes of crude in the state out of a total annual production of about five million tonnes. The Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC), another leading exploration company, produces the remaining two million tonnes of crude in Assam.
India produced about 32 million tonnes of crude last year.
The annual crude production in Assam has been stagnant for the past six years. Low recovery from ageing oilfields is cited as the reason for sagging production of crude from a region known to be rich in oil and other natural resources.
"About 60 percent of our total 500 oil wells in Assam are ageing and that is a real concern for us," said Suresh Baruah, another OIL engineer.
"We are trying to establish new reserves and pools as an extension of the current fields and also going for sophisticated technologies to boost production from the ageing wells. Our target is now to produce about seven million tonnes of crude in another 10 years' time."
The ONGC, operating in Assam since 1959, has a total of 1,250 oil wells in the state of which 700 are ageing wells where production has been dwindling.
The region's disturbed security situation and frequent strike calls by pressure groups demanding job reservations for local youths have also added to the sluggish crude production.
"I wouldn't say insurgency has affected the morale of the workforce, but then we shall have to achieve our target despite all odds," Bhandari said.
Both OIL and the ONGC have been carrying out seismic surveys and preliminary exploratory works in other states in the northeast, which have so far remained "unexplored".
"We feel the northeastern region is sitting on a virtual oil field and, once explored, the chances are quite bright," Baruah said.
Crude in India was first struck in the northeast. Local lore has it that the first reports of oil surfaced when some British army officers reported hearing gurgling and bubbling sounds in the riverbed while touring the forests around Digboi, 527 km from here, some time in 1825.
Eventually, an elephant helped prove conclusively there was oil in the area, when some men laying railway tracks in the area found the animal's feet smeared with crude.
This discovery led Mckillop Stewart and Company of Britain to drill Asia's first successful mechanically drifted oil well at Naharpung near Digboi in 1867 - barely seven years after Colonel Drake drilled the first well in Pennsylvania in the U.S.
Legend has it that it was the excited statements of one of the company's officials, Goodenough, to the men, "Dig boy, dig", that gave the picturesque town its name - Digboi.
It took almost 34 years for the well to go on stream, in 1901.
Today Digboi boasts of two modern wonders of the world - a 100-year-old oilfield still yielding oil and the world's oldest operating oil refinery producing in excess of its capacity.
Source: IANS
Source: IANS