A consortium of Chinese Geo-Jade Petroleum Corporation and US’s Longwood Resources has been selected to explore and develop four onshore gas fields in Bangladesh under a joint venture with the Bangladesh Petroleum Exploration and Production Company (BAPEX).
The BAPEX has selected the consortium to establish the joint venture for the
drilling job following a competitive bidding where three other international oil and gas exploration firms also participated. This Sino-US consortium is to explore the four onshore gas fields under the joint venture, Managing Director of BAPEX Md Atiquzzaman has said.
He said that BAPEX is expected to get natural gas production of around 100 million cubic feet per day (mmcfd) once drilling of wells in these fields is completed.
The consortium will jointly carry out exploration and development works at Patiya, Jaldi, Kasalong and Sitapahar in the country’s southeastern region, said Atiquzzaman.
The Geo-Jade Petroleum Corp and the Longwood Resources will invest the required money to develop and drill these four wells while the BAPEX would own a stake following negotiation with the contractor, he said.
Of the four fields to be developed, Patiya was drilled during early 1950s, Jaldi in mid-1960s and Sitapahar in the late 1980s. State-run Petrobangla will purchase natural gas to
be produced from these fields at a negotiated price.
All of them were recorded as encouraging ‘gas shows’ while Kasalong was ready to be drilled by the consortium, said the BAPEX official. These prospective gas fields are located very close to the industrial gateway as well as port city of Chittagong, which is an assured gas market having gas-transportation infrastructure in place.
All these four gas fields are located in onshore Block 22 that covers an area of around 13,900 square kilometres.
A senior Petrobangla official said the onshore block 22 was originally awarded to US-based firm United Meridian Corporation (UMC) in February 1997 following the country’s first round of international bidding for oil and gas exploration.
Houston-based Ocean Energy later secured the right to explore hydrocarbons in the block through the UMC takeover. But the government took over the block from the Ocean Energy in 2006 following its failure in conducting committed drilling works within seven years of contract.
This is, however, the BAPEX’S second move to explore and develop four onshore gas fields under the joint venture with international oil companies (IOCs) within the past six years.
Under the previous move initiated in 2010, the BAPEX was all set to form a joint venture with Chinese Sinopec Shengli to drill all these four wells.
Sinopec Shengli and Bapex were set to establish the joint venture having 70:30 stakes respectively to explore and develop the four onshore gas fields in the hilly region of Chittagong.
Sinopec had agreed to fund the programme while BAPEX was to receive 30 per cent of the output or the sales revenue without any upfront investment, said sources.
