By IANS
Guwahati : A tribal group in the northeastern state of Assam has held state-owned Oil India Ltd (OIL) to ransom with production of crude oil and natural gas being hit Monday following an oil blockade, the third this month, officials said.
The 36-hour oil blockade by the All Assam Muttock Yuba Chatra Sanmelan (AAMYCS), which began 6 a.m. Sunday, has also seen acts of vandalism with protestors damaging two OIL vehicles, besides other stray incidents during the past 36 hours, a police spokesman said.
AAMYCS has been pressing OIL to announce a Rs.10-billion ($253 million) economic package for the Muttock ethnic group, who dominate certain areas where the company operates in eastern Assam.
“Oil production has been hit and several operational sites were forced to shut down as we were unable to send our workers due to the strike,” Phanindra Dev Choudhury, an OIL spokesman, told IANS over telephone.
“We are yet to assess the production loss. It would be quite substantial,” Choudhury said.
The same group had resorted to a similar 36-hour oil blockade from the morning of Dec 9, forcing OIL authorities to shut down an oil collecting centre at Dikom, besides restricting movement of operation-related vehicles and machinery in drilling sites in eastern Assam’s Dibrugarh and Tinsukia districts.
On Dec 6, the AAMYCS had its first oil blockade this year when miscreants had set an OIL vehicle ablaze, damaged several oil tankers and assaulted three officials working for the oil major.
The police had arrested eight youths on that occasion belonging to the minority Muttock community in connection with the vandalism.
Public sector 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 organisation has come up with a demand for an economic package for a particular community.
“We are bent on pushing ahead with our demand,” AAMYCS general secretary Mintu Borpatra said.
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.
Assam has over 1.3 billion tonnes of proven crude oil and 156 billion cubic metres of natural gas reserves, of which about 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.