THE Oil and Natural Gas Corporations Golden Jubilee Museum located in Dehra Dun is a big hit with schoolchildren and tourists. Children get excited when they enter the section in the museum that has four aquariums depicting the scenes of one of the frontier areas of the ONGCs operation deep-sea drilling. Models of a drilling ship and the platforms that produce hydrocarbons are the highlights of this section.
The museum opened on January 26, 2006. Subir Raha, when he was Chairman and Managing Director of the company, envisioned the setting up of the museum.
According to M. Rajagopala Rao, Group General Manager (geophysics-surface), who headed the team that prepared the blueprint for the museum under the guidance of museologist Sadashiv Gorakshkar, the museum was established with the objective of portraying the history of the world oil industry; the Indian hydrocarbon industry and the ONGC; educating the public about the challenging saga of hunt for oil; and highlighting the technological advances made by the ONGC. An important exhibit is a letter from K.D. Malaviya to Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru, which shows the late Union Ministers commitment to put India on the global oil map. The museum showcases the saga of the ONGC from its commercial discovery in 1959 to the present day.
Chinese bamboo rigs of Han dynasty, Marco Polos references to camel loads of oil in the Baku region and the story of oil in India unfold in an interesting display. Fossilised trees and bones of the Jurassic Age dinosaur discovered by ONGC geologists in Kutch; and the ONGCs latest ventures such as coal bed methane are also on display.
The villagers could not believe their eyes when clear water gushed out from a pump in the Thar desert, 6 km from Jaisalmer in Rajasthan. The well, dug up to 400 metres, produced 76,000 litres of water an hour during a pumping test.
As part of its social responsibility, the ONGC has embarked on a project called ONGC Project Saraswati to provide water in drought-prone areas of India. The river Saraswati, which had made the Thar one of the greenest areas of the subcontinent several thousand years ago, disappeared with the desertification of north-western India.
Rajagopala Rao said the project aimed at finding the possibility of the existence of deep aquifers, similar to conditions that obtained in the Great Man-Made River Project of Libya. The search for oil that began in 1953 in the vast desert of southern Libya not only led to the discovery of huge oilfields but great quantities of fresh water.
A study was initiated in western Rajasthan, covering 13 districts, under a memorandum of understanding signed with Water and Power Consultancy Services (India) Limited, or WAPCOS, to identify broad areas for deeper groundwater exploration. Similarly, deep-seated fresh groundwater under artesian conditions was discovered in the Thar desert in Pakistan in a village called Jumman Samoo, about 75 km east of Umerkot city. A 12-inch bore encountered an aquifer between 1,000 feet (300 m) and 1,200 ft (360 m). The well produced 200 gallons (378 l) a minute, making water available without any operational costs. Rajagopala Rao said a preliminary study had identified Jaisalmer, Bikaner, Barmer, Ganganagar, Nagaur and Hanumangarh districts for detailed investigation.
T.S. Subramanian
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