This is the full details about ONGC project in Tamilnadu.

Tamilnadu wakeup:

The project was started way back in the year of 2012, when ONGC discovered the presence of crude oil in the cauvery basin area. The company then sought an approval from the Ministry of environment and forest for 24 exploratory wells to be drilled in the cauvery-basin area in the following regions.

In a reply, the ministry has set few specific and general conditions for issuingenvironmental clearance and given six month compliance period, for which the company has to submit a report with details complying to all the conditions.

During this compliance period, ONGC sunk 7 wells in the above areas and carried out the desired tests and submitted a detailed ‘six month compliance report’ to the ministry in 30-June-2015 for all the seven wells that were drilled.

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During the same period, there was another project called Kaveri delta coal-bed methane project to extract shale-gas(methane) from the same region. The Project was undertaken by Great Eastern Energy Corporation Ltd(GEECL). Since, the extraction of shale gas requires enormous amount of water and sand, farmers resides in those area showed discontent over the project as this may likely deplete the existing water resources and their livelihood is entirely depends on agriculture. It was then found out the method with which the shale-gas is being extracted, “Fracking”poses serious threats to the environment and the region will go infertile for agriculture in future.

Fracking explained: opportunity or danger

The farmers were agitated of this. They held protests and moved state government to suspend the project by cancelling the license to the company. The Central government then nods for the state government’s decision and then the union minister of state for Petroleum and Natural Gas, Mr. Dharmendra Pradhanannounced that they are dismissing the project with immediate effort in November 10,2016.

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Now, the similarity between these two projects- METHANE extraction sown a fear into the people’s mind as “Hydro-Carbon” is a generic name for oil, natural gas, methane etc.

As long as the company extracts only crude oil and natural gas, there will be only minimal effects to the environment. But the license given to the company states “Hydrocarbon” and that brings a serious agitation amongst farmers and they believes that the shale-gas project is returned in disguise. Since, the government or the company hasn’t given any clarifications about the thing they are going to extract, the confusion still prevails.

Even if ONGC obliges to extract only oil excluding methane(shale gas), the area which the company is going to exploit for the project poses a bigger question as it includes agricultural area and water resources.

Now, what happens to this 11000 acres(44.80 sq km) of crop area? The people whose lives depends on these land are yet to receive any sort of intimation from the government regarding the project. And as per guidelines set by the ministry, ONGC is allowed to use 25 Cu M of water per day that accounts 7.5 lakh litres of water per month for the drilling and other usages. This has terrified the farmers even more, as the region is already drought-hit and they fears that this will worsen the agriculture substantially.

       Mostly we are facing many crisis for water in Tamilnadu. This 7.5 lakh litres of water too affect farmers.We need to wake up aganist this issue and we need to collect the truly accepted details of this ONGC project.Our politicians are in busy to enhold their powers they are not considering peoples present problems.Just share your thoughts about this project friends.
http://www.tnpcb.gov.in/pdf_2014    using this link you can read full detials about that issue.