The state-run energy exploration company Bangladesh Petroleum Exploration and Production Company Limited or BAPEX has successfully extracted gas from a new well in Bhola as part of an experiment.
The company expects to formally start extracting gas from the well at Ilisha in mid-May.
Managing Director of BAPEX Mohammad Ali said they started extracting gas from the Elisha-1 well in Bhola on an experimental basis.
"We hope that reserve of some 180 to 200 billion cubic feet of gas in the well," he said.
If everything goes well, the company will extract the gas from the well from May and it is estimated that 20 to 22 million cubic feet of gas will be extracted from the well daily.
The Island district Bhola is showing the light of hope one after another amid the fuel crisis and the high price of gas energy in the global market.
Gazprom, a Russian state-owned enterprise, is operating the extraction process under the auspices of BAPEX.
With the fresh one, BAPEX has found nine wells of gas in the district so far.
Md Alamgir Hossain, a general manager of Bapex, said the experimental extraction took place on Friday morning, over one and a half months after the drilling began.
He said the gas was found 3,433 metres deep in the Ilisha-1 well, one of the nine in Shahbazpur and North Zone in the district, where the size of the reserve is estimated to be 1.7 trillion cubic feet.
Russian state energy company Gazprom started drilling Ilisha-1 well on Mar 8 with BAPEX’s design. The drilling ended on Apr 24.
BAPEX hopes to supply 20-22 million cubic feet of gas daily from the well.
Bhola is not connected to the national distribution pipeline. Bangladesh recently discovered multiple gas deposits in Bhola, and it drew attention following a crisis triggered by the higher global fuel costs.
In March, the government awarded Intraco Refueling Station Limited the job to transport and distribute natural gas found in Bhola to industrial zones around Dhaka in the form of Compressed Natural Gas or CNG.
