Siddique Islam (National News Service) Dhaka, Monday, April 11: The state-owned Indian Oil and Natural Gas Corporation has proposed to Bangladesh a joint exploration for gas in the blocks which have remained unexplored.
Director of ONGC AK Balyan in a letter to the state minister for energy and mineral resources of Bangladesh, AKM Mosharraf Hossain on April 4, said that the corporation is interested in joint exploration with Petrobangla.
The government of Bangladesh has already planned to go for third round of bidding to make way for international gas and oil companies in conducting survey and exploring new gas fields in the offshore of the Bay of Bengal.
The Ministry for Energy and Mineral Resources of Bangladesh has already received five to six proposals from different countries including India for gas exploration especially in the offshore blocks, official sources said.
Mosharraf told New Age, a local daily, Sunday that the ONGC’s proposal was the newest in a series of offers made by companies from different countries including China, Thailand and Malaysia for exploration of gas in offshore blocks in the last few months.
He said it is a good sign that the foreign companies are showing interest in exploration, since it underscores the probability that there is sufficient gas in the Bangladesh part of the Bay of Bengal.
The country was divided into 23 blocks for hydrocarbon exploration after the government had amended the Petroleum Act in 1993.
Sources said no new field was discovered during 1997 to 2003 and only two gas fields at Srikail and Bangura under block 9 were discovered in 2004, although the present gas reserve, around 14 trillion cubic feet, might be extracted by 2012 to 2014. (End/si)
