Newest Sylhet natural energy reservoir, saviour of the ailing Bangladesh economy.

1425 GMT

Sunday

20 May 2012

The Chinese news agency, ‘XINHUA’ ["New China News Agency") reports on the newest Sylhet natural energy reservoir, saviour of the ailing Bangladesh economy.

[To be continued]

Energy-starved Bangladesh announces discovery of 137 mln barrels of oil

Source:
XINHUA
  |  
2012-5-20  |  
  ONLINE EDITION

DHAKA, May 20 (Xinhua) -- Bangladesh Oil, Gas and Mineral Corporation, well known as Petrobangla, Sunday announced discovery of 137 million barrels of oil in two old gas fields in the country 's northeastern Sylhet district.

Petrobangla has estimated that there are 53 million barrels of proven extractable oil in Kailashtila and Haripur gas fields in Sylhet, some 241 km northeast of the capital Dhaka.

The reserves have been discovered by state-run Petrobangla.

Petrobangla chairman Dr Hossain Mansur told a press briefing in Dhaka Sunday evening the oil in the Kailashtila field is light in nature, which is easily extractable, while that in the Haripur field is heavier.

He said Kailashtila's reserve, spread in five to six layers, was almost three times of that in Haripur.

Oil was first discovered in Bangladesh's Haripur field in the late 1980s but it had been abandoned later as the relevant authorities considered the field commercially not viable.

The latest discovery of extractable oil elates Bangladesh as the south Asian nation of about 150 million people is in dire need of locating new sources of energy. The Bangladeshi government has forecast that current gas reserves of the nation will run out in the next five years at the present consumption rate.

The discovery also comes as a big bless for the impoverished economy when it has been bearing the burden of higher fuel consumption in the wake of insufficient and unreliable electricity in the country.

Mansur said though the amount of extractable oil from the fields is nothing compared with the country's annual demand of fuel oil but "we're so happy because we are going to join the oil producing nations."

He said they will soon float an international bid to select foreign firms to extract oil from the fields within one year to support the government's efforts to ease pressure on the economy due to soaring oil import bills.

Annual demand for fuel oil in Bangladesh rose sharply due mainly to the installation of many oil-fired power plants in recent years. The country's fuel oil consumption had been hovering around 3 million tones a year until it jumped to 4.8 million tones fiscal year 2011-12 (July 2011-June 2012).

The amount is likely to surge to 6.8 million tones in the current fiscal year, said an official of state-run Bangladesh Petroleum Corporation (BPC).

The official who preferred to be unnamed said BPC had also to buy more oil as farm equipments were also dependent more on diesel generators in the wake of frequent loadshedding.

The country's overall electricity generation is now reportedly hovering about 5,600 megawatts (mw) per day against a demand of around 7,000 mw.

The BPC official said the fuel import costs of Bangladesh will be a record of more than 5 billion U.S. dollars in the current fiscal year compared with 4 billion U.S. dollars last fiscal year.

Recently Bangladesh's two development partners -- the Asian Development Bank and the International Monetary Fund -- said one of the major reasons for macroeconomic pressures in the country is the rising oil import.