Fire in ONGC oil well at Olpad, Surat The Minister of State (I/C) for Petroleum & Natural Gas Shri Dharmendra Pradhan informed the Rajya Sabha in a written reply today that Oil Industry Safety Directorate (OISD) had conducted an enquiry into the matter. As per OISD report no culpability could be established, however, the root cause of the incident was found to be inadequate supervision/monitoring of the workover operation by both the operator and charter hire rig operational personnel and also ignorance of basic operational practices by the operational personnel manning the rig. ONGC has also carried out an internal inquiry on this matter and their report will be deliberated in the next Health Safety and Environment (HSE) Board Committee meeting. During the discussion on Rajya Sabha Starred Question no.186 on 13.5.2015 , it was stated that the standard operating procedures which were required to be followed have not been followed and an enquiry would conducted to ensure improvement in the system . Accordingly enquiry was conducted both by OISD and ONGC as mentioned above. Based on the enquiry report, Ministry had directed ONGC to ask its sub-committee of Board on Health, Safety and Environment (HSE) to look into organisational set up of HSE, compliance to standard operating procedure, safety audit etc and recommend changes. ONGC has informed that the existing organisational set up of Health Safety and Environment (HSE), procedures, compliance of standard operating procedures and audit compliance will be deliberated in the next HSE Board Committee meeting and the outcome of the meeting shall be appraised to the Ministry. This Ministry had received two complaints in this matter. One was from, President, Brackish Water Research Centre, Surat and another from Hon'ble MP herself. In both the complaints, a request was made to conduct high level enquiry and take necessary remedial measures to avoid recurrence of such incidents.
