27-645: Digboi (IPA: ˈdɪgˌbɔɪ) is a town and a town area committee in Tinsukia district in the north-eastern part of the state of Assam , India. Crude oil was discovered here in late 19th century and first oil well was dug in 1866. Digboi is known as the Oil City of Assam where the first oil well in Asia was drilled. The first refinery was started here as early as 1901. Digboi has the oldest oil well in operation in India. With
54-481: A significant number of British professionals working for Assam Oil Company until the decade following independence of India, Digboi had a well-developed infrastructure and a number of bungalows unique to the town. It has an eighteen holes golf course as part of the Digboi Club. It has guest houses and tourist residential apartments laid to promote tourism in upper Assam. In 1867 Italian Engineers, commissioned by
81-595: A well. Oil India 's web site contains no history of the Assam Oil Company's origins, but an earlier incarnation claimed that the "decision to drill was taken by the Directors of the AR&;T Co. in 1888 under the direction of Mr. W L Lake, an employee of the company and an oil enthusiast". Once the project had been approved, Lake assembled equipment, boilers, and local labour, and engaged elephants to haul
108-553: Is a scientific agency of India. It was founded in 1851, as a Government of India organization under the Ministry of Mines , one of the oldest of such organisations in the world and the second oldest survey in India after the Survey of India (founded in 1767), for conducting geological surveys and studies of India , and also as the prime provider of basic earth science information to government, industry and general public, as well as
135-715: Is found in the memories and dispatches of the Army Officers who penetrated the jungles of Upper Assam since 1825. Lt. R. Wilcox, Major A. White, Capt. Francis Jenkins, Capt. P.S. Hanney—they all saw at different times petroleum exuding from banks of the Dihing River . C.A. Bruce (1828) and H.B. Medicott (1865) of the Geological Survey of India also saw oil while prospecting for coal in Upper Assam. Mr. Goodenough of McKillop, Stewart & Co. Calcutta
162-467: Is of 982 against state average of 958. Moreover, Child Sex Ratio in Digboi is around 981 compared to Assam state average of 962. Literacy rate of Digboi city at 92.08% is higher than state average of 72.19%. In Digboi, Male literacy is around 95.09% while female literacy rate is 89.02%. Languages spoken in Digboi city (2011) Digboi city has a population of 21,736 individuals as per the 2011 census. Bengali
189-471: Is represented by Suren Phukan of Bharatiya Janata Party . Town area committee A town area committee is a semi-municipal authority constituted for the administration of small towns in India . They are assigned a limited number of civic functions like street lighting, drainage, roads, conservancy, etc. Town area committees were established by an act passed by the state legislature . The act mentions
216-432: Is spoken by ~12,135 individuals, Assamese is spoken by ~3,845 individuals, Hindi is spoken by ~3,440 individuals, and Nepali is spoken by ~1,381 individuals; the rest ~941 speak other languages. Digboi Oil Town was considered as a separate census town in 2011 India census . The population is largely heterogeneous. Assamese, Bengali, Nepali, Bihari, Marwari communities form the majority. People from various tribes such as
243-535: The British Geological Survey , was appointed 'Surveyor of coal districts and superintendent of coal works, Bengal' on 3 December 1845 and arrived in India the following February. The phrase "Geological Survey of India" was first used on his Dec 1847 map of the Damoodah and Adji Great Coal Field , together with Horizontal and Vertical sections of the map. On 4 February 1848, he was appointed
270-506: The ISO-14001 and OHSMC certificate. Digboi is located at 27°22'48.0"N 95°37'48.0"E. It has an average elevation of 165 metres (541 ft).It is situated 510 km north east of Guwahati . As of 2011 India census , Digboi has population of 21,736 individuals, of which 10,964 are males while 10,772 are females. Population of Children with age of 0-6 is 1745 which is 8.03% of total population of Digboi. Committee, Female Sex Ratio
297-585: The "Geological Surveyor of the Geological Survey of India", but he fell off his elephant and, soon after, died with his assistant, F. B. Jones, of 'jungle fever' on 15 November 1848, after which John McClelland took over as the "Officiating Surveyor" until his retirement on 5 March 1851. Until 1852, Geological Survey primarily remained focused on exploration for coal, mainly for powering steam transport, oil reserves, and ore deposits, when Sir Thomas Oldham , father of Richard Dixon Oldham , broadened
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#1732779811511324-519: The Assam Railways and Trading Company, to build a railway line from Dibrugarh to Margherita (Headquarters of Assam Railways and Trading Company) accidentally discovered oil at Digboi around 10 miles from Margherita. "'Dig boy, dig', shouted the Canadian engineer, W L Lake, at his men as they watched elephants emerging out of the dense forest with oil stains on their feet". This is possibly
351-522: The Dibru-Sadiya railway line to Ledo for the Assam Railways and Trading Company (AR&TC) in 1882 were using elephants for haulage and noticed that the mud on one pachyderm's feet smelled of oil. Retracing the trail of footprints, they found oil seeping to the surface. One of the engineers, the Englishman (not Canadian) Willie Leova Lake, was an 'oil enthusiast' and persuaded the company to drill
378-473: The Digboi fields. Today, though the crude production is not high, Digboi is still India's oldest continuously producing oilfield . Digboi refinery, now a division of Indian Oil Corporation , had a capacity of about 0.65 million tonnes per year as of 2003. Digboi is now the Headquarters of Assam Oil Division of Indian Oil Corporation Limited. The Earliest recorded to the existence of oil in India
405-457: The English started a small oil installation at Digboi. In the year 1901, an oil refinery was started at Digboi, thus providing India as well as the continent of Asia with its first refinery. Assam Oil Company was formed in 1899 to look after the running of the oil business in this area. The Digboi oil field produced close to 7,000 barrels per day (1,100 m/d) of crude oil at its peak, which
432-424: The ambit of the scope of functioning of the Geological Survey of India by advancing the argument with the government that it was not possible to find coal without first mapping the geology of India. Thus, the Geological Survey commenced to map the rock types, geological structures and relative ages of different rock types . The age of rock strata was estimated from the presence of index fossils , which consumed much of
459-542: The composition, functions, and other matters related to the town area committee. The members may be partly elected and partly nominated by the state government, or wholly nominated, or wholly elected. In some states, District Collectors are given powers of surveillance and control over the Town area committees. This article about government in India is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Geological Survey of India The Geological Survey of India ( GSI )
486-492: The diameter of the Earth's core. On 8 April 2017 GSI began pilot project, with the first ever aerial survey of mineral stocks by GSI, to map the mineral stocks up to a depth of 20 km using specially-equipped aircraft. The GSI was restructured into 5 Missions, respectively relating to "Baseline Surveys";"Mineral resource Assessments";"Geoinformatics";"Multi-disciplinary Geosciences"; and "Training and Capacity Building", on
513-1110: The geologists' efforts in finding these index fossils, as the method of Radiometric dating for estimating the age of rock strata was not developed at that time. In 1869 Frederick Richard Mallet was first to visit Ramgarh crater . Later studies include by those of Arthur Lennox Coulson In 19th century GSI undertook several surveys including Great Trigonometrical Survey , 1869 Kailash - Mansarovar expedition, 1871-1872 Shigache – Lhasa expedition, 1873-1874 Yarkand – Kashgar expedition, second expedition of this area by Sir Thomas Douglas Forsyth , 1878-1882 Darjeeling – Lhasa – Mongolia expedition, etc. The native surveyors were called pandit , some notable ones include cousins Nain Singh Rawat and Krishna Singh Rawat . In 19th and early 20th century GSI made important contributions to Seismology by its studies and detailed reports on numerous Indian earthquakes. Richard Dixon Oldham , like his father also worked for GSI, first correctly identified p- and s-waves , and hypothesised and calculated
540-535: The machinery to the site. The first well was started in September 1889, but an encouraging first strike at 178 feet (54 m) turned out to be a small pocket, and drilling recommenced. This continued until November 1890 when the well was completed at a total depth of 662 feet (202 m), and it was during this extended period of drilling that Assam Oil Company's magazine adverts placed the legend of Lake exhorting one or more of his labourers to "Dig, boy!". In 1889,
567-405: The most distilled – though fanciful – version of the legend explaining the siting and naming of Digboi. Two events separated by seven years have become fused, but although neither is likely to be provable, such evidence that does exist appears sufficiently detailed to be credible. Various web sites offer variations on the elephant's foot story, a consensus of which would be that engineers extending
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#1732779811511594-410: The official participant in steel, coal, metals, cement, power industries and international geoscientific forums. Formed in 1851 by East India Company , the organization's roots can be traced to 1836 when the "Coal Committee", followed by more such committees, was formed to study and explore the availability of coal in the eastern parts of India . David Hiram Williams , one of the first surveyors for
621-652: The tea-tribes (brought in by the colonial planters as indentured labourers from the Chhota Nagpur plateau region), Bodos , Mishings etc. have also made it their home. Digboi is part of Dibrugarh constituency of the Lok Sabha which is represented by Rameswar Teli of Bharatiya Janata Party . It also lies in the Digboi Constituency of the State Assembly or Vidhan Sabha where it
648-510: The union by shooting down of the president of the labour union which was to be followed by issuing orders of Quit Digboi, Quit Lakhimpur and finally Quit Assam to the leaders of the labour union. The Digboi Refinery modernization project was taken up in large-scale in order to overcome the technological obsolescence of the old refinery. Subsequently, a number of other major projects were undertaken by Assam Oil Division to further revamp and modernize Digboi Refinery. Digboi refinery has been awarded
675-681: Was a major labour union strike in the Refinery. The Gandhi Movement of Congress for Indian Independence struggle; backed by labour rights and equality status was headed by Sardar Amar Singh Marwah. The break of the World War II coincided with the Digboi labour strike resulted in harsh steps taken by the British Administrative offices to crush the strike. The Viceroy and the Governor intervened and adopted sturdy steps to crush
702-487: Was during World War II . The field was pushed to produce the maximum amount of oil with little regard to reservoir management; as a result, production started to drop almost immediately after the war. The current production from the Digboi fields is about 240 barrels per day (38 m/d). Over 1,000 wells have been drilled at Digboi. In 1989, the Department of Posts , India came out with a stamp commemorating 100 years of
729-674: Was the first in India to start a systematic programme of drilling for oil in November 1866, at Nahorpung about 30 miles (48 km) south east of Dibgoi, just seven years after the world's first commercial oil well was drilled in 1859, by Col Edwin L Drake in Pennsylvania , USA. This hand dug well—the first oil well in India—was drilled up to 102 feet (31 m) and proved dry. However, the second well struck oil at Makum near Tinsukia , about 14 miles (23 km) from Digboi. In 1939, there
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