The government is annoyed with Chevron, the international US Oil Company (IOC), for initiating a deal of transferring its asset here to a Chinese company without responding to Bangladesh’s offer, sources said.
“We will not take the issue in goodwill that Chevron has struck a deal with another foreign company without replying to our proposal,” State Minister for Power, Energy and Mineral Resources Nasrul Hamid said this to journalists after attending a meeting in the city on Monday.
Recently, Chevron inked a preliminary deal with China’s state-run Zhenhua Oil Company for the transfer of its ownership of gas fields in Bangladesh.
“We gave an offer to Chevron earlier, but they did not respond to us,” the minister said.
Sources said that both the Ministry and Petrobangla had refused to meet a high-level delegation from Chevron’s US headquarters when it sought to consult with the government about the deal with the Chinese company.
In respect to this development, Nasrul Hamid said, “They sought to meet me, but I declined, since the Ministry is yet to get any response from them regarding our proposal.”
“As per the Production Sharing Contract (PSC), Chevron can sell its assets to whoever it wants, but the sellout is subject to government’s approval. If the government is not fully convinced with the handover, considering various issues, the government has the capacity to block such a sellout,” a Petrobangla official works for PSC said.The estimated value of the gas fields, which include Bibiyana, the largest gas field of Bangladesh, is US$ 2 billion. Those gas fields account for more than half of the country’s production.
Chevron has been operating three gas fields in the country-Bibiyana, Jalalabad and Moulvibazar. Production from those gas fields stands at 720 million cubic feet of natural gas and 3,000 barrels of condensate.
In October last year, the government showed interest to buy Chevron-owned gas fields because it was a matter of “national interest”, and a purchase offer was “on the table,” Energy Division sources said.
Meanwhile, employees of Chevron Bangladesh complained that four months since the US firm disclosed its sellout plan, it has not made any commitment to the employees about how the transition would take place.
The Chevron Bangladesh Employees’ Union, in a recent statement, said that the company’s 571 national employees were being kept in the dark and that they faced “uncertainty about their lives and careers”.
