Anisul Islam Noor :
The government plans to invite fresh international bidding for exploring oil and gas in the Bay of Bengal.
Giving direction regarding this letter which was sent to Patrobangla from Prime Minister’s office recently, after cancelling the first bidding the contract for two-dimensional seismic survey for oil and gas in the Bay at the final stage without conveying any reason.
In the letter instructed Petrobangla to invite fresh bidding for survey and explore oil and gas, an additional secretary of Ministry of Power, Energy and Mineral Resources told The New Nation on Wednesday.
The official, however, refused to say why the first bidding was cancelled. He said that the instruction was prompted by a directive from the Prime Minister’s office.
In July, after leaving Petrobangla’s evaluation report on the backburner, the PMO asked a team of officials from the energy division and Petrobangla to re-evaluate the bids from five companies saying that the evaluation left the possibility of a ‘competent’ company losing in the competition.
Within a week the officials submitted a re-evaluation report which was in no way different from the first evaluation report.
On March 29, Petrobangla received bids from five companies in response to the tender it had floated on February 8.
Petrobangla was planning to award the contract in May so that the seismic survey could start in the coming winter when the sea would be calm. Following identification of the potential locations of oil and gas reserves in the Bay, Petrobangla had plans to invite bids for oil and gas exploration from international oil companies in 2016.
The decision to invite fresh bids could delay oil and gas exploration by at least two years though there is little scope for it when the country’s onshore gas reserves is depleting fast, said experts.
The exploration would cover 70,000 square km of the sea split into 19 blocks The five first time bidders included the joint venture formed by Tomlinson Geophysical Services Inc and Schlumberger, Russian DMNG JSC, US-based Geotrace Technologies, China National Petroleum Corporation BGP Inc and Norwegian Dolphin Geophysical. In 2012, a joint venture formed by Stateoil of Norway and ConocoPhillips of US were the lone bidder for a production sharing contract PSC for three deep sea blocks. Later, Conoco withdrew leaving the task to the Norwegians.
In the same year, Oil and Natural Gas Corporation Videsh, a state run enterprise of India, won the contract for oil and gas exploration in two shallow sea blocks for which it was the lone bidder.
A joint venture formed by Santos Sangu Field Ltd of Australia and Krisenergy Asia Ltd of Singapore won the contract for exploring a shallow sea block.
So far, Petrobangla signed two production sharing contracts PSCs with ONGC and another with Santos-Kris.
