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Energy

173 day long disaster in India ended by Piston Well Services of Red Deer

Published

4 years ago

8 minute read

Burning since June 9, a well blowout at Baghjan, India had foiled all who were tasked with somehow stopping the flames.  Oil India Limited (OIL) tried regional companies and then it reached out internationally.  Now one was able to fix this well blowout until they called in Piston Well Services Inc.  The Red Deer based company was able to kill the well within days.

From the LinkedIn account of Piston Well Services Inc.

Alert Disaster Control (ALERT), with their well intervention service partner, Piston Well Services, have completed the critical well killing operation in Assam, India.

Piston Well Services mobilized a 142K Snubbing/Hydraulic Workover Unit and specialists to India to assist ALERT in the final phase of the well kill operation. Oil India Limited. officially designated the well as ‘killed’ on November 15 at 1400 hrs local time.

ALERT and Piston Well Services thank everyone that contributed and persevered through the unprecedented logistical challenges to support the operations. Oil India Limited’s commitment to the successful conclusion of the operations, will continue to support the local community and ensure the ongoing protection of the sensitive adjoining wetland areas.
#canadianenergy #albertaenergy #teampiston

News Video from RepublicWorld.com

Report from Newsfile Online
By RISHU KALANTRI
Tinsukia, Nov 15: Oil India Limited (OIL) on Sunday finally achieved success in killing the blowout well at Baghjan in Assam’s Tinsukia district, almost five and a half months after the blowout occured on May 27.
The development came two hours after the “kill fluid” was pumped into the well at a depth of 3600 metres as part of the last phase of snubbing operation.

The good news comes in the evening

OIL tweeted at 5.35 pm on Sunday: “Baghjan blowout well successfully killed: The well has been killed with brine solution & under control now. Fire has been doused completely. There is no pressure in the well now & the same will be observed for 24 hours to check if there is any amount of gas migration & pressure build up.”

Talking to NewsFileonline, OIL spokesperson Tridiv Hazarika said the process to inject the kill fluid started around 11 am on Sunday and soon positive results were visible. “However, it will take few more hours before achieving 100 per cent success,” he said.
“Director (exploration and development ) P Chandrasekaran, director (operations) PK Goswami and resident chief executive BK Dad visited the Baghjan well site and had detailed discussions with the experts from Alert (Damage Control)  and OIL crisis management team (CMT),” said Hazarika, adding: “Further operations to abandon the well is in progress.”

The way ahead

According to an OIL source involved with the operation, the next step would be to pull out the pipes which will be followed by cementing the well. “Once it is done and tested, the snubbing unit will be uninstalled, blowout preventer (BoP) will be removed and X-mas tree will be placed before the well is abandoned.”
In August, OIL succeeded in capping the blowout well by installing BoP on the well head after two failed attempts on July 31 and August 10.
However, the kill-the-well operation failed following detection of a leakage at the casing well head and here’s when the global experts from M/s Alert Damage Control decided to move in for snubbing operation and tied up with Alberta-based Piston Well Services to move in its snubbing unit alongwith four crew members.
The 60-ton snubbing unit was flown in from Canada’s Calgary by the world’s largest cargo aircraft — Antonov An-24, to Kolkata in the third week of October and it reached the blowout well site on November 4.
On September 13, OIL succeeded in diversion of the gas after a failed attempt and used the opportunity to start partial production from a well under blowout for the first time in OIL’s history.

What is snubbing unit and the process?

A snubbing unit is a hydraulic rig that can do everything a rig can do in addition to its ability to perform under pressure in an under balanced live well state.
Snubbing operation is a type of heavy well intervention performed on oil and gas wells. It involves running the BHA on a pipe string using a hydraulic workover rig. Unlike wireline or coiled tubing, the pipe is not spooled off a drum but made up and broken up while running in and pulling out, much like conventional drill pipe.
In oil parlance, the well is killed at the bottom by inserting pipes and pumping mud through this new pipe. Killing entails injecting artificial mud into the well at very high pressure to fill up the well and stop the gas from rising to the surface.
Due to the large rigup, it is only used for the most demanding of operations when lighter intervention techniques do not offer the strength and durability. The first snubbing unit was primarily designed to work in well control situations to “snub” drill pipe and or casing into, or out of, a well bore when conventional well killing methods could not be used. Unlike conventional drilling and completions operations, snubbing can be performed with the well still under pressure (not killed). When done so, it is called hydraulic workover. It can also be performed without having to remove the Christmas tree from the wellhead.

Baghjan gas well No 5 — India’s longest well on fire 

OIL has 22 producing wells, 18 oil wells and four gas wells at Baghjan Oil Field in Tinsukia district.
The “blowout” occured at the gas well No. 5 at Baghjan oilfield, in the proximity of Maguri-Motapung Beel and Dibru Saikhowa National Park, while workover operations were under way to produce gas from new sand (oil and gas bearing reservoir) at a depth of 3,729 metres. This caused natural gas and condensate oil gush to hundreds of feet in the air and spill all around.
The well caught fire on June 9 and has been raging for 160 days before finally getting doused today.

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After 15 years as a TV reporter with Global and CBC and as news director of RDTV in Red Deer, Duane set out on his own 2008 as a visual storyteller. During this period, he became fascinated with a burgeoning online world and how it could better serve local communities. This fascination led to Todayville, launched in 2016.

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Energy

Straits of Mackinac Tunnel for Line 5 Pipeline to get “accelerated review”: US Army Corps of Engineers

Published on April 17, 2025

By

 

From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By Audrey Streb

The Army Corps of Engineers on Tuesday announced an accelerated review of a Michigan pipeline tunnel under the Straits of Mackinac following President Donald Trump’s declaration of a “national energy emergency” on day one of his second term.

Enbridge’s Line 5 oil pipeline is among 600 projects to receive an emergency designation following Trump’s January executive order declaring a national energy emergency and expediting reviews of pending energy projects. The action instructed the Army Corps to use emergency authority under the Clean Water Act to speed up pipeline construction.

“An energy supply situation which would result in an unacceptable hazard to life, a significant loss of property, or an immediate, unforeseen, and significant economic hardship,” if not acted upon quickly, the public notice reads.

U.S. President Donald Trump holds up a signed executive order as (L-R) U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum look on in the Oval Office of the White House on April 09, 2025 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

U.S. President Donald Trump holds up a signed executive order as (L-R) U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum look on in the Oval Office of the White House on April 09, 2025 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

“Line 5 is critical energy infrastructure,” Calgary-based Enbridge wrote to the DCNF. The company noted that it submitted its permit applications to state and federal regulators five years ago and described the project as “designed to make a safe pipeline safer while also ensuring the continued safe, secure, and affordable delivery of essential energy to the Great Lakes region.”

Army Corps’ Detroit District did not respond to the DCNF’s request for a copy of the notice or for comment.

The pipeline has been active since 1953 and extends for 645 miles across the state of Michigan, according to the Department of Environment, Great Lakes, and Energy website. Line 5 supplies 65% of the propane needs in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and 55% of the state’s overall propane demand, according to Enbridge.

Environmental organizations, Native American tribes and Democratic leadership have opposed the project due to concern regarding the risk of an oil spill in the Great Lakes. Enbridge and the Army Corps argue that the tunnel is a necessary addition to the long-standing pipeline. (RELATED: ‘Taking Away Local Control’: Whitmer Signs Massive Green Energy Mandate Into Law)

The project has faced legal trouble and permitting delays that have hindered its expansion. Michigan Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer in 2019 used a legal opinion by Attorney General Dana Nessel to argue that the law that created the authority to approve the project “because its provisions go beyond the scope of what was disclosed in its title.”

The State of Michigan greenlit the project in 2021 and the Michigan Public Service Commission approved placing the new pipeline segment in 2023.

Trump has championed an American energy production revival, stating throughout his 2024 campaign that he wanted to “drill, baby, drill,” in reference to oil drilling on U.S. soil.

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Daily Caller

Trump Executive Orders ensure ‘Beautiful Clean’ Affordable Coal will continue to bolster US energy grid

Published on April 17, 2025

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From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By Isaac Orr and Mitch Rolling

 

President Trump signed several executive orders Tuesday that will allow coal-fired power plants to stay online past planned retirement dates, identify coal resources on federal lands, and bolster the reliability of the electric grid. The orders may help the U.S. face an uncomfortable truth: wind turbines and solar panels can’t cost-effectively meet the U.S.’ growing electricity needs.

Coal provides an important source of the reliable and fuel-secure energy needed to keep the lights on. Our organization’s research shows that it is more affordable than wind and solar, too.

Mr. Trump’s executive orders will allow coal operators the flexibility to delay the premature closures caused in part by President Biden’s policies. A May 2024 rule from the Biden Environmental Protection Agency would have forced coal plants to spend billions on unproven technology to capture 90% of their carbon dioxide emissions. If coal plants failed to comply by 2035, they would be forced to shutter by 2039. The Trump EPA has since announced it will reconsider this rule, but the process could take years.

Coal should be allowed to help keep the lights on, especially because U.S. electricity demand is rising. The North American Electric Reliability Council’s 2024 long-term reliability assessment warns that “resource additions are not keeping up with generator retirements and demand growth” in most regions of the U.S. Coal produced 16% of the U.S.’ electricity in 2023, and coal, natural gas and petroleum together produced 60%. Nuclear comprised another 18%. It is folly to believe that the U.S. can meet its growing power demands while kneecapping a significant source of its baseload power.

Not only is reliable baseload power a must for the grid, but electricity generated by coal is less expensive than intermittent resources like wind and solar. It’s easy to understand why: the cheapest source of electricity is from plants that have already been built. Most of the U.S.’ coal fleet is like houses where the mortgages have been paid off. With no loans or interest left to repay, operating costs for existing coal plants typically consist of property taxes, insurance, labor, maintenance, and fuel.

Our organization models the full costs of building enough wind, solar, and battery storage to replace coal, natural gas, and nuclear plants. Powering a grid on wind, solar, and batteries is more expensive than coal because connecting wind turbines and solar panels to the grid entails system-wide costs like constructing new transmission lines. The intermittency of wind and solar means you need more power plant capacity to generate the same amount of power. More power plant infrastructure means more property taxes. More weather-dependent resources means more costs to managing the grid, like turning off wind turbines and solar panels when they are producing too much electricity for the grid to absorb — or conversely, ramping up natural gas generation on cloudy and still days when wind and solar aren’t producing.

Our research incorporates system-wide costs and shows that a realistic midpoint estimate for wind turbines is $72 per MWh. Electricity from new solar can range between $50 per MWh to $85 per MWh. Data from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission shows that the average coal plant generated electricity for only $34 per megawatt-hour (MWh) in 2020 (the last year of available data). It could be even less expensive for coal plants to generate electricity if states and utilities allowed coal plants to operate more often. In 2024, the coal fleet generated electricity only about 43% of the time. If that approached 80%, costs could go as low as $29.

Keeping America’s “beautiful, clean coal” plants online is the right thing for the country and it is good news for consumers that the U.S. has recognized the electric grid’s reliability hole and decided to stop digging.

Isaac Orr is vice president of research, and Mitch Rolling is the director of research at Always On Energy Research, a nonprofit energy modeling firm.

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