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World's oldest oil refinery in Assam turns 100

Syed Zarir Hussain, in Assam

The world's oldest operating oil refinery in the northeastern state of Assam is celebrating its centenary with a pledge to produce high quality diesel, wax and other petrochemicals.

Embedded in history, the Digboi refinery in eastern Assam, 527 km from the state's principal city Guwahati, has become a piece of local legend, apart from being an industrial unit producing 650,000 metric tons of crude oil annually.

"On this centenary year, we took a resolve to produce higher quality diesel, kerosene, besides wax, bitumen, and other petrochemicals than what we are producing now", a refinery spokesman said.

As part of a massive modernisation drive, a whopping Rs 18 billion was spent towards enhancement of existing exploratory equipment, besides importing technologies from abroad and developing state-of-the-art expertise for boosting crude oil production.

The Digboi refinery, the flagship of the state-run Indian Oil Corporation and the country's largest commercial enterprise, has chalked out an extravaganza later this year to mark the centenary celebrations.

"As a gesture of goodwill the central government would be releasing a commemorative postal stamp on this historic centenary year," K A Sangtam, Member of Parliament from Nagaland, told IANS. "Digboi Refinery has become an inseparable part of history for the people of the northeast," he added.

Sangtam is among the parliamentarians from the northeast who have keenly pursued with the petroleum ministry for allocation of Central funds to upgrade the Digboi refinery.

Local lore has it that the first reports of oil in the region surfaced when some British army officers reported gurgling and bubbling sounds in the riverbed while touring the heavily forested terrain some time in 1825.

However, it was an elephant that helped prove conclusively there was oil in the area when some men laying railway tracks in the area found the animal's feet smeared with crude.

This discovery led Mckillop Stewart and Company of Britain to drill Asia's first successful mechanically drifted oil well at Naharpung near Digboi in 1867 - barely seven years after Colonel Drake drilled the first well in Pennsylvania in the United States.

It was the excited urgings of one of the company's officials, Goodenough, to the men "Dig boy, dig" that gave this picturesque town its name Digboi.

But it was only in 1889 that the well was proved commercially viable and it went on stream in 1901.

Today, Digboi boasts of two modern wonders of the world - a 100-year-old oilfield that still yields oil and the world's oldest operating oil refinery that produces in excess of its capacity.

"The refinery is awaiting excise relief under the prime minister's special package for the northeastern region as that would help us survive and sustain in a free market, deregulated scenario in the next couple of years," the spokesman said.

Moreover, there are attempts at trimming its 3,000 strong workforce to make it competitive. Already it has downsized staff by 600.

Indo-Asian News Service

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