Unocal is now performing different tests on its well no. 2 and well no. 3 drilled at Kalapur area in Srimangal upazila of Moulvibazar district two kilometres off the Magurchhara site. The final flare test on the wells will be performed on Friday while pressure and leakage tests on the 24-kilometre long pipeline began yesterday.

The inauguration was earlier scheduled for March. But reasons like delay in the process of land acquisition for the pipeline from the gas plant to the national grid at Muchhai of Habiganj, excessive rain in September last, and others delayed the work.

The US company also faced problems with the Department of Forest as the forest officials refused to allow Unocal to lay pipeline and construct the 2.7-kilometre road through the reserve forest in the Lawachhara National Park near the Kalapur location apprehending environmental degradation in the area. Things were finally settled with the intervention at higher level.

The Lawachhara National Park is attached to Magurchhara, where a massive blowout and fire took place on a well in June 1997, as another US company Occidental was drilling at the site. The incident caused large-scale destruction to forest resources and the ecology in addition to the waste of huge gas that raised an uproar in the country.

Unocal will initially supply 70 mmcfd from the two wells in Moulvibazar gas field. By the yearend it will rise to 150 mmcfd as Unocal plans to drill two new wells in the nearby Nurjahan tea garden and in the Zerin tea garden locations, the sources added.