Nagaland shortlists firms to clean oil spill

The Nagaland government has decided to give an international company the job of cleaning up the crude oil contamination in a 12 square km area from which ONGC withdrew in 1994. Rahul Karmakar reports.

The Nagaland government has decided to give an international company the job of cleaning up the crude oil contamination in a 12 square km area from which ONGC withdrew in 1994.

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Six foreign firms have been shortlisted for this purpose. The one that's selected will have the task of extracting crude also.

"Capping the oil wells, repairing the clogged pipes and cleaning up the oil spillage will take about two years," said Nagaland planning minister TR Zeliang. "But interest of the people affected by the spillage comes first."

Zeliang heads a five-member cabinet subcommittee that has been dealing with issues related to crude oil exploration in Nagaland. The subcommittee is scheduled to submit its recommendations to the government for inking a deal with an oil company for the decontamination and mining of hydrocarbon products.

Nagaland's oil dream had soared after Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) struck oil in Wokha district after a survey started in 1973. The oil major began extracting crude there in March 1981 but was asked to leave in March 1994 following protests from local pressure groups.

Ecologists and pollution control officials later marked a 4 sq km area as the most hit. ONGC, however, claimed it had adopted all safety measures while suspending operations and blamed miscreants for tampering with the oils to harvest a ‘valuable commodity' (oil) and causing spillage.

Meanwhile, two scientists from a Dehradun-based institute will visit Changpang-Tssori to study the extent of the damage.