Cylinder blast at OIL canteen near Tengakhat leaves one critically hurt

A gas cylinder exploded at a canteen inside an Oil India Limited (OIL) installation in the Kharikatia area near Tengakhat in Dibrugarh district on Sunday afternoon, leaving one man with serious injuries, Pratidin Time reported.

The blast happened at around 3 pm at an OIL canteen at Murani, in Block No. 4 of Kharikatia, not far from Duliajan. According to the report, the cylinder went off without any warning, and the noise and force of the explosion caused panic among people living and working in the area.

Injured man rushed to hospital

The injured man, who was linked to the running of the canteen, was taken to hospital by local residents and the administration soon after the blast. His condition was described as serious. His name has not been reported so far.

There was no immediate word from OIL or the district administration on what caused the cylinder to explode, or on whether any other damage was done to the installation. NEInsider will update this report when officials share more details.

Second incident in three days

The explosion comes as the Tengakhat area is still reeling from a much larger accident at OIL's intermediate tank farm on November 6. That fire broke out after an explosion during maintenance work, and the death toll rose to four on Sunday when another injured worker, Sailen Gogoi of Padumoni village in Tengakhat, died of his burns at a hospital in Dibrugarh.

All those killed or hurt in the tank-farm fire were employees of Spectron Engineering Private Limited, a Mumbai-based contractor engaged by OIL. The company has announced ex-gratia of Rs 10 lakh for the family of each person who died and Rs 5 lakh for each of the injured, and has suspended three officers and one employee over alleged negligence.

Union Minister Sarbananda Sonowal, who represents Dibrugarh in the Lok Sabha, has called for a high-level probe into the circumstances that led to the tank-farm explosion.

Safety questions

The back-to-back incidents at OIL sites around Tengakhat have added to questions in the oil belt of Upper Assam about safety standards at installations and the supervision of contractors. The canteen blast appears to be a separate accident, and no link to the tank-farm fire has been reported.