Anisul Islam Noor :
The government plans to set up second unit of Eastern Refinery Limited (ERL) with annual refinery capacity of 30 lakh tonnes to meet the country’s growing demand for petroleum.
The country’s petroleum demand is about 60 lakh tonnes, but annual consuming capacity was only five lakh tonnes when ERL was established in March 1963, said Engineer Gazi Md Ali Afzal, Managing Director of ERL.
Estern Refinary was set up with annual refinery capacity of 15 lakh tonnes. Another unit with about 30 lakh tonnes capacity is much needed, which will be able to meet 75 per cent of domestic petroleum demand, he said.
Bangladesh has well experience to run oil refinery activities as the ERL is operated by home experts and technicians since the beginning. As huge money is required to establish another refinery unit, a joint venture investment is necessary, ERL DG said.
ERL is working with direction of Bangladesh Petroleum Corporation (BPC) in this regard. ERL already prepared development project proposal (DPP) to install the second unit of the ERL, senior BPC official told The New Nation.
“The second unit needs $150 billion US dollar as construction cost,” sources said.
The government has acquired 30 acres land to expand ERL’s second unit, he said.
A state owned company of China, Kuwait and Islamic Development Bank are interested to finance such project, the official said.
The Eastern Refinery Limited in Chittagong is the country’s lone oil refinery, currently refining about 14 lakh tonnes of crude oil per year against a capacity of 1.5 million tonnes, BPC sources said said.
