Govt plans to invest with IOCs for offshore exploration [ Tritiyo Matra News ]

Govt plans to invest with IOCs for offshore exploration

Local March 06, 2016

Energy adviser to the prime minister Tawfiq-e-Elahi Chowdhurty on Saturday said that the government was planning to invest together with the international oil companies in oil and gas exploration in the Bay of Bengal to facilitate the search for new deposits.
‘We can invest $200 million to $300 million in offshore exploration through state-run Bapex as the IOCs are not interested in exploration in the wake of rise in cost of investment,’ he said.
He was addressing a seminar, hosted by the Dhaka Chamber of Commerce and Industry, on prospects and challenges for industries in the energy and power sector in the 7th Five-Year Plan at the DCCI auditorium in the city.
Tawfiq said that the cost of investment in oil and gas exploration shot up in the wake of price crunch of natural gas following fuel oil prices on the international market.
In 2015, investment of nearly $150 billion in oil and gas exploration was stalled around the globe, he said.
M Tamim, a professor at petroleum and mineral resources engineering department of Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology, presented the keynote paper at the seminar while Badrul Imam, a professor at geology department of University of Dhaka and M Shamsul Alam, dean of electrical and electronics engineering department of Daffodil University, discussed at the seminar.
In his presentation, Tamim criticised the 7th Five-Year Plan as it projected an increase in gas-fired power generation by 1,048MW in 2016, 2,805MW in 2017 and 800MW in 2018 although the country’s gas reserve was declining fast.
He said that the government’s plan to import 500 million cubic feet of natural gas per day in liquid form would double the supply cost.
Tamim also said that the government had failed to discover large gas reserves due to lack of exploration works although a study in 2003 showed that there was a possibility of discovering gas fields with 8.4 trillion cubic feet reserves.
It would require $8 billion to $10 billion investment to tap the potential gas reserves of 8.4 trillion cubic feet which, if imported, might cost $122 billion.
Tawfiq said that Indian state-run oil and natural gas corporation Videsh would drill two gas wells in two shallow sea blocks in the coming winter.
But he requested to wait for 10 more years for a result from deep sea blocks.
The energy adviser also said that the government took a crash programme to drill 100 onshore wells in the next five years to increase gas supply.
He assured the business leaders that the government would ensure power supply in line with the industrial demand in two years.
DCCI president Hossain Khaled requested the energy adviser to provide gas and electricity connections to the newly-established industries.
Tawfiq said that the government would facilitate the country’s private sector if someone could import natural gas from Myanmar through pipeline.
He said Bangladesh and India are two large markets of natural gas for Myanmar.
It would be more commercially viable for Myanmar to export gas from its reserves located near Bangladesh border than to export those to Thailand, he added.