GUWAHATI, Oct 15 - The public hearing panel in the city on the oil pipeline proposed by the Oil India Ltd (OIL) for evacuating the products of the Numaligarh Refinery Ltd (NRL) between Numaligarh and Siliguri yesterday said that it had no objection to allow M/s Oil India Ltd to lay the product pipeline.
However, it laid the condition that in doing so Oil India Ltd should abide by all the existing environmental measures as per provision of the laws and it should also pay due attention to restoring the total environmental quality of the stretch of 456 km in Assam.
Besides, it said that the Oil authority should comply with all the directives/ guidelines to be issued by the Pollution Control Board of Assam, Departments of Environment and Forests of Assam and the Union Ministry of Environment and Forests and the Central Pollution Control Board and the civil authorities.
It may be mentioned here that the NRL has been facing stagnation due to failure of the railways to extend help to it in evacuating its products. The refinery, product of the Assam Accord and designed as a 3 million metric tonne one, was allocated an enhanced crude allocation of 2.8 thousand metric tonnes in the 2003-04 fiscal.
But due to the failure of the railways to help it evacuate the surplus products, it failed to go for enhanced production and hence its allocation was slashed to 2.2 thousand metric tonnes. It has been facing a loss of about Rs 100 crore annually because of this. The pipeline has been proposed to bail the refinery out of this crisis, said the NRL sources.
The panel also directed the OIL authorities to take into account the points raised by the Asom Jatiyatabadi Yuba-Chattra Parishad (AJYCP), Bokakhat unit. The AJYCP unit had alleged that the leakage in a crude pipeline of the NRL had damaged about 200-hectare farmland of Panka village on July 29, 2003.
Moreover, the public hearing on the product pipeline proposed by the OIL between Numaligarh and Siliguri has not been widely publicised. The conclusions of the earlier public hearings on such projects have also not been implemented. The pipeline now proposed is aimed at helping a vested interest circle, which is bent on setting up a commercial centre at Siliguri depriving the local jobseekers of the State, the AJYCP unit alleged.
Siliguri will be controlling the entire business resulting from the pipeline and nearly one hundred of the State?s unemployed youths who are engaged in the oil tanker business will be led to penury, as all of them have been running the oil tanker business with money borrowed from the banks, the AJYCP unit said.
Meanwhile, the NRL effluents have led to the contamination of the Dhansiri water and the refinery has also disturbed the elephant habitat. The elephants thus disturbed have now started depredation in the nearby areas. Even the State Forest Department is also not of any help to the people affected by the rampaging elephants, the AJYCP unit alleged. The Morigaon part of the hearing on the pipeline is scheduled for October 30, while the date of its Golaghat part is yet to be fixed