A stretch of a river in eastern Assam’s Dibrugarh district has been burning for two days following the spillage of crude oil from “punctured pipelines”. Officials of the Oil India Limited (OIL), headquartered at Duliajan in the district, said the crude oil that trickled into river Burhidihing on Saturday night could have been recovered had the stretch not been set on fire. The OIL as well as the district authorities, however, did not rule out accidental fire in that stretch about 500 metres long. “Our team specialising in crude oil recovery and damage restoration after any spillage had done their job that very night when one of our central tank pumps had an instrument failure making a valve stop instantly. Almost 99% of the spillage was on land but the rest fell in a leader drain that is linked to the Burhidihing,” an executive in OIL’s corporate communications told The Hindu from Duliajan. Crude extracted from the OIL’s wells in eastern Assam is pumped into the central tank pumps where it is processed and sent to the century-old Digboi refinery on one side and refineries elsewhere in the country on the other. ‘Damage minimal’ “Because the valve closed, a reverse pressure was created in the pipelines and crude spilt from resultant punctures in the pipelines in two places. By the time the leakage was identified, the spillage happened in the leader drain which was not noticed immediately at night,” the executive said, declining to be quoted. OIL officials said the crude would have settled in time for the specialised team to recover and insisted that the loss due to burning of the crude was minimal. “We attach a lot of importance to safety at our installations and areas beyond,” he added. Expert committee Dibrugarh Deputy Commissioner Pallav Gopal Jha said an expert-level committee was monitoring the situation and trying to minimise the environmental damage. Officials handling disaster management in the district said visuals of the fire of the burning river doing the rounds of social media were a bit dated. “The situation is under control with the crude having either burned out or the fire extinguished by specialists,” he said. Environmentalists said the OIL or any other exploration agency should take a lesson from the accident. “Spillage of crude or processed oil in river bodies threatens aquatic life, which an ecologically delicate State like Assam can ill-afford,” said green activist Soumyadeep Dutta.