Page 7 - AsianOil Week 02 2023

AsianOil PIPELINES & TRANSPORT AsianOil

Indian-Bangladesh fuel pipeline to

begin operations in February

SOUTH ASIA INDIAN officials have said the India-Bangla- Dhaka in early January and discussed the open-
desh Friendship Pipeline (IBFPL) will likely ing of the new fuel pipeline as well as gas and
The pipeline will carry begin operations in February. Work on the 130- electricity supplies.
1mn tonnes per year km pipeline began in September 2018 and was “We have conducted two separate meetings
of diesel fuel at full completed in mid-December last year, according successfully, as the two ministers assured of
capacity. to reports in the Indian media. extending their co-operation to Bangladesh’s
When operating at full capacity the pipeline power and energy sector,” Hamid said. He added
will carry 1mn tonnes per year (tpy) of diesel fuel that Bangladesh intends to open a fuel market
from India’s state-owned Numaligarh Refinery and wants to engage the private sector to import
Limited’s (NRL) facility in Siliguri, West Ben- and sell oil at the retail level.
gal, to the Parbatipur fuel depot operated by “In this regard, India is implementing the
the Bangladesh Petroleum Corporation (BPC). open market fuel process [for some time] and
The construction cost of the pipeline is put at we want to know [its] experience and [the min-
INR337.08 crore ($425mn). isters] assured of sharing knowledge with us,” he
“The project is in a true sense an engineer- told Bangladeshi media.
ing marvel,” a NRL executive was quoted as say- Hamad said Bangladesh is currently import-
ing. “We faced lots of hurdles, but with mutual ing oil from India on a small scale and that a
co-operation and technological understanding pipeline carrying regasified LNG was being con-
between the two countries this international structed from India to Khulna.
project will see the light of the day.” Meanwhile, Bangladesh’s state-own
NRL invested INR91.84 crore ($113mn) in PetroBangla has begun seismic surveys in the
the Indian section of the pipeline and the Indian country’s offshore areas in the Bay of Bengal. The
government invested INR285.24 crore in the company’s general manager, Shahnewaz Parvez,
Bangladeshi section in the form of a grant as said the surveys are underway, but that it would
aid. NRL and BPC in April 2017 signed a long- be at least seven years before hydrocarbons could
term agreement covering the sale of high-quality be produced as a result.
diesel, and in October 2017, the two agreed to a “In the first three years, the surveys will be
15-year agreement on the supply of gas oil. carried out to find out which blocks have gas or
Indian state-owned Oil India Limited (OIL) oil. After that, foreign companies will buy the
holds a 69.63% stake in NRL, while the Assam surveys. Only then can search and extraction
state government and Engineers India Limited work begin. It will take at least five years. It usu-
hold stakes of 26% and 4.37% respectively. ally takes longer than that,” Parvez said.
Earlier this month, Bangladeshi State Min- As with a number of countries, Bangladesh
ister for Power, Energy and Mineral Resources has been facing an energy crunch brought about
Nasrul Hamid said that India had assured him by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the subse-
that it would support Bangladesh’s energy and quent war, which has seen natural gas prices
power sectors. Hamid met with respective increase drastically and supplies of LNG hard to
Indian ministers for natural gas and power in obtain.™

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