The 10-year-old boy leans against a bed at home, his face
serene, seemingly in deep sleep. But the tranquil scene in the
photograph hides a deep tragedy: He is among the more than 200
people killed in Kaixian County, southwest China's Chongqing
Municipality last month.
On the night of December 23, a natural-gas well blowout in the
area got out of control, its high concentration of deadly hydrogen
sulphide killing 243 people, mostly villagers, in their sleep or as
they tried to flee the toxic fumes.
In the following days, some 4,000 people were hospitalized and
more than 60,000 displaced.
Five days of investigations conducted by a specialists group
yielded the conclusion that it was a grave accident caused by
workplace negligence of Eastern Sichuan Drilling Company under the
China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC), announced
Vice-Director of the State Administration for Safe Production
Supervision Sun Huashan on January 2.
"Had workers been vigilant and detected signs of a forthcoming
accident in time, had they strictly observed the operating rules
and not torn down a necessary blowout prevention valve, or if they
had ignited the blowout gas quickly enough, far fewer people would
have lost their lives,'' Sun said.
And the public have some questions: How was this negligence
possible at a State-owned oil giant boasting world-class gas
production technology: "Why did only two gas-well workers die while
so many innocent farmers perished? Why was the gas well built so
near to homes? Why had almost nobody ever been informed of the
lurking dangers? Will similar tragedies occur again at gas wells
and claim many more lives?"
What went wrong?
The culprit gas well, known as Luojia 16, is located in the
mountainous areas in Chongqing, which used to be under the
jurisdiction of Sichuan Province, where natural gas production
recorded 10 billion cubic meters last year, accounting for 31 per
cent of the country's total.
Industry experts say gas blowouts are common in natural-gas
production, especially in the earlier phases, when workers have to
drill thousands of meters deep through unpredictable strata.
But seldom does a blowout go out of control, as control
technologies nowadays are quite advanced.
"Sichuan Province has the best equipment and technicians in the
country, and the expert team sent to Kuwait to put out oil well
fires after the first Gulf War was composed mainly of personnel
from Sichuan,'' says Gao Deli, a professor with the University of
Petroleum in Beijing.
But now the technicians from Sichuan were found to have failed
to fix a blowout-prevention valve on the drilling post, which is
the "most basic safety measure''.
Tang Zhenghua, an adviser with the experts committee of China
International Engineering Consulting Co, said he could not
understand how a gas well which did not meet the least standards
could get production permits and pass repeated inspections.
Even if a blowout occurred and went out of control, the workers
could have reduced harm to the minimum by igniting the gas, which
becomes innocuous water and sulphur after burning, said Tang.
In fact, the gas was not ignited until 18 hours later, when the
invisible demon had already wreaked widespread havoc.
Another intolerable mistake is that the gas-well workers did not
inform the local governments during the first minutes " the best
time for rescue efforts " of the blowout.
There were more than 20 workers on duty that night. But
villagers later told Outlook Oriental Weekly, a Shanghai-based
magazine, that five of them ran to a nearby villager's home after
the accident.
The workers stayed there, huddled around a fireplace, till the
next morning when they and the homeowner felt dizzy, and ran to a
village 10 kilometers away.
The blowout began at 9:55 pm on December 23, but the county
government of Kaixian said it didn't receive the first telephone
call from the drilling team until one-and-half hours later.
Kaixian's work safety bureau did not know of the accident until
it got a call from the higher-level authority, the Municipal Work
Safety Bureau of Chongqing.
Even the township government of Gaoqiao, which is only 1
kilometer away from the gas well, was not told about the accident
until after 11 pm.
According to the work-safety regulation of Chongqing, central
government-owned or municipal enterprises are under the supervision
of the Chongqing Municipal Work Safety Bureau.
"Although the gas well is located in Kaixian, the county work
safety authority never had a say on its production,'' says Xiao
Wancheng, deputy director of Kaixian's work safety bureau.
When accidents occur, the gas-well operators usually report to
their superiors, such as Eastern Sichuan Drilling Co, Sichuan
Provincial Petroleum Administration or the Chongqing municipal
government.
What the local governments of Kaixian and Gaoqiao got was
second-hand information; and the best time for rescue was wasted,
says Xiao.
Even after the local government got the information, many
villagers could not be informed of the danger as the officials and
rescuers had no protective masks to enter the danger zone.
Even worse, most farmers could not afford to install a telephone
at home, and the villages had no loudspeakers that used to be
common in rural areas " where households are scattered across vast
areas " to broadcast news or warn them of dangers.
Devastation
Most villagers living near the gas well realized something was
wrong and began to flee only after they saw their livestock fall,
themselves feeling sick and weak, and smelling something like
"rotten eggs''.
Villager Tang Xiaoying told CCTV that her family of 13, living
in a house 200 meters away from the gas well, heard a big noise of
a blast and then a quake "as if a mountain collapsed''.
Instinctively, the 31-year-old teacher of Xiaoyang Village
Primary School woke up her family and urged them to dress up and
run for their lives.
The family walked about 15 minutes to the primary school a few
ridges away, where the stench was less powerful.
After waiting in the cold for two hours, five family members
left for home when seeing no apparent danger. Four of them never
came back except Tang's father-in-law, who crept to the school
after seeing his cattle foaming and people falling along vegetable
fields.
The panicked people in the school did not survive except Tang,
her mother-in-law, and her nephew, who were found by an ambulance
three hours later. Her twin daughters and the rest of the family
were already dead.
The village of Xiaoyang and nearby Gaowang were the hardest hit.
Many families died together at home.
Drilling on Luojia 16, one of a number of gas wells developed in
the rural areas of Kaixian County, started May 23 last year.
Drilling on the first one, Luojia 14, began in 1999.
The developers are aware that the natural gas in these areas
contains a high concentration of poisonous sulfphurated hydrogen;
but the villagers were barely aware.
"I've seen the drilling company working on the site in our
village for five years, but nobody ever told me what benefit it
would bring, or what danger it poses,'' says Zhou Ke'an, Party
secretary of Xiaoyang Village.
Safety system urged
Experts are calling for the establishment of a complete
supervision system of safe production, which would require that
enterprises be responsible not only for themselves, but also for
the public and environment safety.
"Existing workplace safety stresses mainly on the enterprises"
own workers,'' says Zhou Xinquan, dean of China University of
Mining and Technology.
"But industry safety has become more and more related with
public safety, especially in thickly populated areas.''
Zhou says a precautionary safety assessment and a complete set
of contingency measures are very important for an enterprise to
ensure the nearby residents" safety.
The contingency schemes must spell out possible dangers and
counter-measures, which should be informed to local governments, so
that they are not caught on the wrong foot once an accident occurs,
Zhou says.
According to industry standards, a high-risk gas well like
Luojia 16 should not have had residents in an area of at least 1
kilometer in diameter.
But in this case, the nearest home was only 20 to 30 meters
away.
Some 10 days before the accident, when an official of Sichuan
Petroleum Administration was asked why they did not tell the
residents about possible dangers, the official was quoted in China
Newsweek as asking: "Will they allow us to drill a gas well if they
know that" ''
The oil company was also not subject to an official
environmental and safety assessment before operation, which would
normally cost 2-3 million yuan (US$240,000-US$360,000) " in the
context of the fortune underground, it is not a big amount.
The gas company in Kaixian handed in 38 million yuan (US$4.6
million) just in taxes each year.
It is ironic that China National Petroleum Corporation had
introduced an international safety management system " known as HSE
" not long before the accident.
The oil giant also has its own environment protection measures,
which stress timely reports to possible victims of major harmful
accidents.
But these were apparently not implemented at the Kaixian
accident.
"We must consider human life, instead of money, a priority,''
says Luo Yun, a work-safety expert with China University of
Geoscience.
Epilogue
The 60,000 evacuated villagers, including most of those
hospitalized, have gone back home now.
People have resumed farm work, or are discussing furnishing
their houses to celebrate the Chinese Lunar New Year, which falls
on January 22.
The family members who have survived have received an average of
140,000 yuan (US$16,900) for each deceased victim as compensation
from the oil company.
They have also got compensation for lost property and
livestock.
The money is a fabulous sum for the poor farmers but at a
terrible cost of 243 lives, including 30 primary school students
aged between 7 and 12.
(China Daily January 12, 2004)