600 people from 3 villages evacuated after gas leak at Konaseema in Andhra sparks inferno<\/p>\n
A gas leak at an ONGC well here in Dr BR Ambedkar Konaseema district operated by a contractor sparked an inferno on Monday, leading to the evacuation of around 600 people from three villages within a four-km radius.
No deaths or casualties have been reported so far, an official of the Maharatna public sector company said.<\/p>\n
“The fire occurred due to a gas pipeline leakage at the Mori-5 well, which is operated by Deep Industries Ltd as part of production enhancement operations,” an ONGC official told PTI.<\/p>\n
People from neighbouring Irusumanda, Gudapalli and Lakkavaram villages were evacuated to safer locations, while holidays were declared for two schools.<\/p>\n
The district administration made food arrangements for the evacuees; some of them were also seen taking refuge at a church in Gudapalli.<\/p>\n
According to a press release from the Konaseema district administration, flames from the gas well wafted 20 metres high with a 25-metre diameter.<\/p>\n
To douse the flames, firefighters are sourcing water from an irrigation canal 200 metres away from the disaster.<\/p>\n
“Clarity could emerge on the blowout blaze containment in 24 hours,” authorities said in the press release. The gas leak happened around 12.20 pm on Monday during drilling operations.<\/p>\n
Around 12.40 pm, the leaked gas, which engulfed a 500-metre area from the well, caught fire.<\/p>\n
At least 10 fire tenders are currently at the site battling the fire, which is 200 km from the greenfield capital city of Amaravati.<\/p>\n
Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu inquired about the fire and ordered a quick dousing.<\/p>\n
Officials of the Oil and Natural Gas Corporation (ONGC) from Rajahmundry rushed to Well Mori-5 near Malikipuram to assess the situation and ascertain the cause of the fire.<\/p>\n
The district collector, superintendent of police, deputy collector and ONGC officials are monitoring the situation at a secretariat located 100 metres away from the inferno.<\/p>\n
Initially, a thick white cloud of gas blanketed the surrounding paddy fields and coconut trees.<\/p>\n
The gas eventually ignited, creating a towering inferno, which burned several palm trees in its vicinity.<\/p>\n
Videos of local police and the workers in orange, red and blue overalls running for their lives went viral as a couple of fire tenders were seen on standby, according to PTI Videos.<\/p>\n
The fire has broken out amid newly planted rabi paddy crops and palm trees.<\/p>\n
In a release, ONGC said, “An incident of gas leakage during workover operations at Well Mori-5 was reported by the PEC operator, Deep Industries Limited, at the Mori field.”<\/p>\n
The well is located in a remote area, with no human habitation within a 600-metre radius.<\/p>\n
The affected area has been cordoned off, cooling operations have commenced, and ONGC has mobilised its Crisis Management Teams (CMT and RCMT), the oil and gas major said.<\/p>\n
Preparatory work is underway to facilitate well control and, if required, capping of the well.<\/p>\n
ONGC has also initiated coordination with international well-control specialists, the release said.<\/p>\n
Mobilisation arrangements have been activated to support advanced well-control and casing-cutting operations, subject to site assessment.<\/p>\n
Additional equipment is being mobilised from nearby locations, including Rustumbada village near Narsapuram in West Godavari district.<\/p>\n
Deep Industries Ltd, a Production Enhancement Contractor (PEC) of ONGC, had secured a Rs 1,402-crore contract in 2024 for production enhancement operations at ONGC’s Rajahmundry Asset in Andhra Pradesh, according to reports.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"600 people from 3 villages evacuated after gas leak at Konaseema in Andhra sparks inferno A gas leak…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":389895,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4,450,451,3,452,453],"class_list":["post-389894","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-breaking-news","tag-breaking-news","tag-breakingnews","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/389894","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=389894"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/389894\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/389895"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=389894"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=389894"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=389894"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}