Efforts on to invite int’l bidding within a month for gas exploration: Energy Secretary

Bangladesh government‍‍`s Energy Secretary Dr. Md. Khairuzzaman Mozumder has said that the government has planned to invite international bidding for offshore hydrocarbon exploration within a month.

“Last week the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs approved the New Model Production Sharing Contract (PSC). Now we’re making our highest efforts to go for international bidding within a month,” he told a webinar on Wednesday (August 09, 2023).

The Energy and Mineral Resources Division of the Ministry of Power, Energy and Mineral Resources organized the webinar to observe “the National Energy Security Day”.

The energy secretary said the government is assuming that this time a huge response will be received from international oil companies (IOCs) as the Model PSC has been modified making it more attractive.

“We’re already getting some positive indications in this regard,” he added.

He said the government has been working for ensuring energy security and part of it LNG is being imported to supply the gas to the industries on priority basis.

Dr Tawfiq Elahi said that the issue of gas exploration has to be on a realistic basis.

“It’s unrealistic to determine a gas reserve in any place until we find gas through drilling, “he said adding, the possibility of having new 10 trillion cubic feet (TCF) at different locations could be a class-room lecture.

“But until we drill and find it, we should not have prospects of 10 TCF gas,” he said criticizing Prof Anwar Hossain’s statistics about prospects of new gas in the country.

Anwar Hossain in his speech said if the government drills 18 new wells, it can find 9-10 TCF gas easily as the country’s success ratio in drilling is 1:3.

Mollah Amnzad said that drilling of wells is a very costly matter. So, the foreign companies can be engaged in this regard.

He mentioned that the government is experiencing a dollar crisis and now it’s failing to pay the IOCs, private power producers and also the LNG suppliers.

He said the government has made many good policies. But its problem with implementation has now created the current energy crisis.

Power secretary Habibur Rahman said that the government has taken a move to generate 2000-3000 MW of electricity from renewable sources in the next 2-3 years.