By IANS
Guwahati : Crude oil and natural gas production in Assam was partially hit Sunday with the state-owned Oil India Limited (OIL) shutting or scaling down operations in parts of the state in the wake of a 36-hour ‘oil blockade’ launched by a tribal group, officials said.
The All Assam Muttock Yuba Chatra Sanmelan (AAMYCS) has launched the stir, which began 6 a.m. Sunday, to press OIL to announce a Rs.10 billion economic package for the Muttock ethnic group that dominates certain areas of the company’s operations in eastern Assam.
“We have shut down an oil collection station at Dikom while there has been restricted movement of operation-related vehicles and machinery in areas like Chabua and Barekuri purely as precautionary measures,” OIL spokesman Phanindra Kumar Dev Choudhury told IANS on telephone from Duliajan, the company’s operational headquarters, in the eastern Dibrugarh district.
Up to 50 youths, believed to be supporters of the blockade, were arrested by the police from Dibrugarh and the adjoining Tinsukia district Sunday. “Most of these are preventive arrests,” a police official in the area said.
On Thursday, during a 24-hour oil blockade launched by the same organization, miscreants set ablaze an OIL vehicle, damaged several oil tankers and assaulted three officials working for the oil major.
Police arrested eight youths belonging to the minority Muttock community in connection with Thursday’s vandalism. They have since been sent to judicial custody.
State-run companies in industry-starved Assam have always been under pressure from local groups for jobs and contracts, but it is for the first time that a local organization has come up with a demand for an economic package for a particular community.
“We are bent on pushing ahead with our demand and will decide on a fresh course of agitation after the 36-hour blockade,” AAMYCS general secretary Mintu Borpatra told reporters.
India produces about 30 million tonnes of crude oil annually, with Assam accounting for about 5 million tonnes.
OIL produces about 3.5 million tonnes of crude in Assam annually.
The state has over 1.3 billion tonnes of proven crude oil and 156 billion cubic meters of natural gas reserves. An estimated 58 percent of these hydrocarbon reserves are yet to be explored. Assam currently produces about 5 million cubic metres of natural gas annually.