NHPC’s own 2024 paper recorded gas fires in Teesta-VI tunnels before fatal blast
A 2024 technical paper by NHPC engineers reveals that flammable gas was detected and caught fire in the Teesta-VI tunnel years before a fatal explosion in 2026. The report highlights geological risks associated with Himalayan rock formations.
Why it matters
This raises serious questions regarding industrial safety protocols and whether known geological hazards were adequately addressed before a major fatal accident.
Flammable gas had been encountered repeatedly, and had caught fire more than once inside the headrace tunnels of the Teesta Stage-VI hydroelectric project in the years before the explosion, suspected to be from release of methane, which killed at least 15 workers on Monday (July 20, 2026), according to a technical paper written by the National Hydroelectric Power Corporation Limited’s (NHPC) own engineers in 2024.
The paper, authored by five NHPC engineers and presented at EUROENGEO 2024, the 4th European Regional Conference of the International Association for Engineering Geology, at Dubrovnik, Croatia, sets out the geological difficulties faced in completing the 500 MW project’s two headrace tunnels, each about 13.7 km long. The paper was written well before the accident and does not describe the recent blast. A headrace tunnel is the component that purveys water from a source to an electric plant’s turbines.
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