Australian firm to prospect for oil in Assam

Friday, 03 October 2003, 19:30 IST
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GUWAHATI: India has sought the help of Australian experts to boost the country's sagging crude oil production in the northeastern state of Assam. The state-owned Oil India Ltd (OIL), one of India's premier oil exploration firms, has hired an Australian geophysical company to help pinpoint probable blocks that could yield oil. "Very soon we expect the Australian experts to begin their work in Assam," an OIL spokesman said. "We are sure the advanced technology used by the Australians would enable us locate new oilfields." OIL, which has been operating in Assam since 1953, produces about three million tonnes of crude out of the state's total annual production of about five million tonnes. The Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC), another leading state-owned exploration company, produces the remaining two million tonnes. India produces about 32 million tonnes of crude oil annually. The annual crude production in Assam has been stagnant for six years. Low recovery from ageing oilfields is cited as the main reason for the sagging output from a region known to be rich in oil and other natural resources. "American and Russian experts were already working to revitalise the ageing wells with 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." About 1,000 of the 1,750 wells in Assam have almost stopped producing oil. "We are trying to establish new reserves and pools as 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," said Suresh Baruah, another OIL engineer. Crude in India was first struck in the northeast. Local lore has it that the first reports of oil surfaced when British army officers reported hearing gurgling and bubbling sounds in the riverbed while touring the forests around Digboi, 527 km from here, in 1825. Eventually, an elephant helped prove conclusively there was oil in the area, when some men laying railway tracks in the area found an animal's feet smeared with crude. This discovery led Mckillop Stewart and Company of Britian to drill Asia's first successful mechanically drifted oil well at Naharpung near Digboi in 1867 -- barely seven years after the first well was drilled in Pennsylvania in the U.S. Legend has it that it was the excited urgings of one of the company's officials to the men - "Dig boy, dig" - that gave this picturesque town its name of 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
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