CDS (II) 2020 General Knowledge · Question 57 of 120

Correct — A, removing the spool during the blowout control operations. The setting is Oil India's Baghjan gas well number 5 in Tinsukia district of Assam, drilled in 2006 and producing between 80,000 and 100,000 standard cubic metres of gas a day. On 27 May 2020 at about half past ten in the morning the well went out of control during workover operations: a new sand reservoir was being opened while equipment from the previous one was being serviced, and the blowout preventer had been temporarily taken off for that maintenance. Gas then escaped uncontrolled for thirteen days. On 9 June it ignited at the wellhead while the well-control operation was under way, and the option the key selects names the step of that operation — taking off the spool, a section of the wellhead assembly — during which the fire began. The other three options describe events that never happened at Baghjan.

• (b)transfer of oil from its depot to a pipeline — Wrong kind of accident altogether. Baghjan number 5 was a producing gas well and the failure happened at the wellhead during workover, not in storage or transfer infrastructure.
• (c)the leakage of methyl isocyanide — Belongs to a different disaster. The compound that escaped at Bhopal in 1984 was methyl isocyanate — the paper prints isocyanide, which is a different substance name — and no such chemical was present at Baghjan. What escaped there was natural gas, a mixture of methane, propane, propylene and other gases.
• (d)the leakage of radiations from radioactive substance — No radioactive material was involved. This is an oil and gas field, and the hazard was a hydrocarbon blowout and fire.

A blowout is the uncontrolled release of oil or gas from a well when formation pressure overcomes the barriers meant to hold it. The last of those barriers is the blowout preventer, a stack of valves and rams at the wellhead that can seal the bore in an emergency. Workover — re-entering an existing well to change zones or replace equipment — is one of the operations in which those barriers are deliberately disturbed, which is why it is among the most hazardous routine jobs in the industry.

This item can be answered by elimination even without the technical detail, because three of the four options relocate the accident to a different industry. Once you know Baghjan is a gas well, the pipeline transfer, the Bhopal chemical and the radiation option all fall. On the keyed option, be precise about what is documented and what is not: the blowout on 27 May with the preventer temporarily off, and the fire on 9 June during work at the wellhead, are on the record; the identification of spool removal as the exact ignition step is what the official key asserts, and this card follows the key on that point rather than an independent document. The aftermath matters as much as the cause — two firefighters died on 10 June, an engineer later in September, some fifty houses were destroyed, and a National Green Tribunal committee found that Oil India had operated without required environmental clearances and had violated safety procedures.

• The well was Oil India Limited's Baghjan number 5 in Tinsukia district, Assam, drilled in 2006.
• It produced 80,000 to 100,000 standard cubic metres of gas a day before the accident.
• The blowout occurred on 27 May 2020 during workover operations, with the blowout preventer temporarily uninstalled.
• The well caught fire on 9 June 2020; two firefighters died the following day and an engineer died in September.
• A National Green Tribunal committee found Oil India had lacked required environmental clearances and breached safety procedures.

• Importing Bhopal into any Indian gas question; the substances and the industries are unrelated.
• Assuming a fire that burned for months must have had an exotic cause; the fuel was simply an uncontrolled gas well.
• Confusing the blowout date of 27 May with the fire date of 9 June.

As a cause-of-the-event item like this one, or through the environmental fallout and the bodies that investigated it.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Baghjan blowout of 2020 occurred at a well operated by which one of the following companies?

  • (a)Oil and Natural Gas Corporation
  • (b)Oil India Limited
  • (c)Indian Oil Corporation
  • (d)GAIL

  Answer(b) Oil India Limited — the well was Baghjan number 5 in Tinsukia district, Assam.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The device fitted at a wellhead to seal the bore and prevent an uncontrolled release of oil or gas is called

  • (a)a christmas tree
  • (b)a blowout preventer
  • (c)a drill collar
  • (d)a mud pump

  Answer(b) a blowout preventer — at Baghjan it had been temporarily removed for maintenance when the well went out of control.