The standing committee of the National Board for Wildlife (NBWL) on June 27, based on a legal opinion from the Environment ministry cleared that drilling for oil and gas within 1 km of wildlife sanctuary “is not covered under mining”.
Ruling on the Jamua Ramgarh (Sariska) mining case in 2006, Apex Court banned the mining activities within 1 km of all wildlife sanctuaries and national parks.
In the Oilfield (Regulation and Development) Act, 1948, “mine means any excavation for the purpose of searching for or obtaining mineral oils and includes an oil well”. The safety issues involved in oil extraction are regulated by the Director General of Mines Safety and the Oil Mines Regulations, 1984 made under the Mines Act, 1952.
Before Phase III of the Dirok gas field development project of the Hindustan Oil Exploration Company Ltd (HOECL) ,in Tinsukia district of Assam that came up before the NBWL this year, the Environment ministry itself noted that “it is not clear how two appraisal wells were drilled within 1 km of the Protected Area by the user agency” since the permission given in 2015 was for drilling 1.5 km away from the Dehing Patkai wildlife sanctuary.
On May 15, while clearing Phase III of the project, the NBWL, in line with the 2006 order of the Supreme Court, stipulated that “wells within 1 km distance of the boundary of the sanctuary shall be plugged permanently and no oil/gas stalled be extracted from such wells”.
In the wake of HOECL’s request to “review and remove the condition”, the ministry’s Impact Assessment (IA) division on June 21 argued that while mining was listed under item 1(a) of the schedule of activities in the Environment Impact Assessment Notification 2006, item 1(b) provided for oil and gas exploration, development and production.
Based on this argument, the ministry’s Legal Monitoring Cell provided an opinion on June 23 that the 2006 Supreme Court judgment was “not applicable in the case under reference” as drilling for oil and gas wells is “not covered under mining.”
The Environment ministry, however, went ahead and placed the matter before the NBWL on June 27.
On Friday NBWL released that, “the Standing Committee (of the NBWL) came to the conclusion that oil drilling activity is a separate activity from mining as per EIA notification 2006 and agreed to the waiver of the condition of plugging permanently the wells located within 1 km distance from the boundary of the sanctuary”.
Although the board went by the ministry’s view that drilling could not be considered as mining activity, the “definition” remained open to scrutiny by legal authorities, said Dr. HS Singh, member of the NBWL standing committee.
