Kazi Zahidul Hasan :
Authorities concerned have accelerated land acquisition and requisition process for laying the first-ever cross border oil pipeline between India and Bangladesh.
The process has been initiated in line with a Development Project prepared by the Bangladesh Petroleum Corporation (BPC) with an estimated cost of Tk 370 crore.
The government of Bangladesh will bear all the project cost.
Of the total cost, Tk 111.67 crore would be spent for compensation to land owners for acquiring and requisitioning of lands.
Besides, Tk 259 crore would be spent for procuring, laying, installing and acquiring lands for underground pipelines (7km) and equipments for Saidpur 250MW fuel-based power plant from ‘tap of point’ (Sonapukur Chirirbandor) of the India Bangladesh Friendship Pipeline (IBFPL) project, and building six tanks with 6,761 metric ton capacities at the project’s oil receiving terminal at Parbatipur and developing other facilities for the Indo-Bnagla oil pipeline, according to the draft of the Development Project Proposal (DPP).
Meghna Petroleum Corporation will implement the project on behalf of BPC, a state-run government agency, tasked with import, distribute and market oil and petroleum products across Bangladesh.
“We have accelerated the land acquisition and requisition process for faster implementation of the flagship project,” Mir Saifullah Al Khaled, Managing Director of Meghna Petroleum Corporation, told The New Nation yesterday.
He said several teams are working in the field to select the land and the process would be completed by this month.
When asked, Mir Saifullah said,” Delay in land acquisition for a development project is common scenario in Bangladesh because it involves complexity. So, we may not see it as setback for the pipeline project.”
He, however, hinted that the project tenure might get one-year extension for smooth completion of the pipeline project.
Mir Saifullah also said that the Planning Commission’s Evaluation Committee has already held meeting on the DPP and sought some correction on it. The DPP is expected to get the Commission’s approval once correction is done.
The DPP shows that the land accusation (199.34 acres) and requisition (134.14 acres) will eat up 36 per cent of the project cost.
The project is scheduled to start by July this year and deadline to complete the project is December 2020.
On April 23, 2015, Bangladesh Petroleum Corporation (BPC) and Assam-based Numaligarh Refinery Limited (NRL) signed a deal to construct the pipeline from NRL’s Marketing Terminall in Siliguri, West Bengal, India to BPC’s Depot at Parbatipur, Dinajpur in Bangladesh.
The length of the IBFPL is 129.5km, and only 5.16km would fall in India.
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and her Indian counterpart Narendra Modi jointly inaugurated the construction of the oil pipeline through a video conferencing from Dhaka and New Delhi respectively on September 18 last year.
Lying and procuring of the pipeline, installation and developing other necessary facilities for the IBFPL is to be financed through India’s ongoing development co-operation programme at an estimated cost of Rs 346 crore and would be completed in 27 months, and the capacity of the pipeline would be one million metric tonnes per annum.
India has so far extended US$8.0 billion credit line for Bangladesh as part of the intensified economic and bilateral cooperation between the two friendly neighbous.
An official of Meghna Petroleum involved with the project told The New Nation yesterday that the process for acquisition and requisition of land for the pipeline project is going on in full swing.
“The process is expected to complete by this year, and thereby the main construction work for laying the pipeline would start,” he added.
According to him, the pipeline of 10-inch diameter would be laid 7 feet under the soil on a 10-meter width land.
Of this, six-meter land would be made for acquiring and four meter for requisitioning.
The cross-border pipeline will go through Panchagarh, Nilphamari and Dinajpur district to reach Parbatipur oil storage tanks inside Bangladesh.
