UNB :
‘Techmip has placed some 650 observations and we addressed most of them. Negotiations are going on to settle the remaining 175 of them.’ Eleven years have passed since Bangladesh Petroleum Corporation (BPC) undertook “Eastern Refinery Unit-2” project to increase the country’s petroleum refining capacity, but no headway has been made in its implementation so far.
According to official sources, BPC is now evaluating a technical offer of Technip, a French engineering company, which was engaged through an unsolicited process for creating Front End Engineering Design (FEED) at a cost of Tk371.81 crore for the proposed ERL unit-2 through a contract signed in January, 2017.
“We are now evaluating the technical offer of Technip to meet our compliances to be qualified before calling for a financial offer,” said Syed Mehedi Hasan, director, operation and planning of PPC.
“Techmip has placed some 650 observations and we addressed most of them. Negotiations are going on to settle the remaining 175 of them.”
“Now we hope we will be able to settle them within the current month,” he told.
Unit-2 project was undertaken by BPC in 2010 to increase the company’s capacity to 4.5 million metric tons by adding 3 million metric ton from the new one.
At present, the Unit-1 has an annual production capacity of 1.5 million metric tons. It was installed in 1968 by the same French company.
Technip completed the FEED for ERL unit-2 and then placed it to BPC for negotiations.
Once the technical negotiations are completed, the financial offer of the Technip will be opened for final negotiation to go for a contract, said the BPC director.
State Minister for Power, Energy and Mineral Resources Nasrul Hamid believes that the evaluation and negotiations of Tecnip’s technical offer will be concluded within a week or two.
“Then the French company will be asked to submit a financial offer for negotiation. If we accept the offer, we will proceed to award the contract to Technip”, he told UNB.
The whole process of implementation of the ERL-2 is being done under the Speedy Power and Energy Supply (Special) Act 2010 which allows his ministry to award any contract to any company without completing the bidding process.
“We have preferred Technip for the project as it has a proven track record,” he said.
The BPC officials also informed that the project’s environmental impact assessment (EIA) was completed much before and they received clearance from the Department of Environment (DoE) for the project.
In April, 2016, BPC hired Indian company Engineers India Limited (EIL) for rendering the Project Management Consultancy (“PMC”) for installation of ERL Unit-2 at a contract value of $16,545,000 plus Tk8.22 crore.
After signing of the contract with BPC, the Indian consultancy firm in a media release said BPC will implement the ERL Unit-2 project at a cost of $1.7 billion dollars (approx Tk15,000 crore) over the next three years.
