Anisul Islam Noor :
The country’s dependency on power import will be raised by 42 percent in 2020 as per different power purchase agreements at higher prices from India.
According to Power Development Board (PDB), Bangladesh will import 7500MW electricity from the public and private sectors of India by that year.
Most of the contracts signed were without tenders which helped them charge higher prices, PDB officials said, adding that the contracts were awarded under the Speedy Supply of Power and Energy (Special Provisions) Act 2010.
Such contracts would make an imbalanced dependency for Bangladesh’s domestic power and energy sector on its largest neighbour, experts feared.
The deals signed so far with the Indian public and private sector energy
utilities in the past one year and the contracts set to be awarded to them have already claimed a major share of the country’s energy sources, they said. According to the government plan, about 25 per cent of natural gas and 18 per cent of diesel would be supplied by Indian utilities during this period.
Consumers Association of Bangladesh Energy Adviser M Shamsul Alam warned that such dependence on India would obstruct national capacity building, both in public and private sectors, and cause a threat to the energy security.
State Minister for Power, Energy and Mineral Resources Nasrul Hamid, however, sees no problem with importing electricity and primary energy.
‘Many conflicting nations are carrying out uninterrupted trade between them for years whereas relations between Bangladesh and India are much friendly now,’ he said.
Energy expert M Tamim, also a professor at Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology, said the government should pay more attention to the contracts’ technical issues, such as price, reliability and quality of energy to be supplied by Indian utilities.
On April 10, the last day of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s state visit to New Delhi, Bangladesh’s utilities signed six energy sector deals worth about $9 billion with their Indian counterparts. Since March 2016, the government has signed four contracts and finalised two more deals to be signed with Indian companies either to build power plants or to buy about 4,500MW electricity, officials said.
They said the Power Division is examining an Indian offer to export 400MW power to Bangladesh from a coal-fired power plant under construction near Haldia Port in West Bengal.
The government also plans to import about 2,600MW power from Nepal and Bhutan through India, the officials said.
India introduced a guideline in December 2016 that would bar Bangladesh from directly importing electricity from Nepal or Bhutan through Indian territory as the guideline allowed no such electricity transit.
According to the guideline, India will ‘facilitate’ such cross-border trade of electricity through its own agencies who are to buy electricity from a neighbouring country and sell it to other neighbour under separate bilateral agreements.
Bangladesh began importing 500MW electricity from India’s Western Grid since October 2013.
On April 10, 2017, PDB initialled two contracts, one with India’s Adani Power (Jharkhand) Ltd for importing electricity for 25 years from its 1,600MW power plant to be installed in India and the other with Reliance Bangladesh LNG & Power Ltd to buy electricity for 20 years from its 718MW gas-fired power plant to be installed in Narayanganj.
Both the Indian companies will charge higher tariff comparing to the other local companies, according to PDB officials.
The power board also signed a Memorandum of Understanding with India’s NTPC Vidyut Vyapar Nigam Ltd to import 500MW power from a hydropower facility to be built in Nepal by India’s private company GMR Ltd, they said.
The Indian company will transmit electricity from Nepal-India border to Bangladesh-India border.
The PDB also signed a supplementary agreement with the same Indian company to import 60MW power from Palatana gas-fired power plant in Tripura. In March 2016, Bangladesh began importing 100MW power from the facilities.
The 160MW power was surplus in India’s north-eastern provinces and would cost much higher.
In March 2016, the government approved a contract to be signed with India’s Shapoorji Pallonji Infrastructure Capital Company to buy electricity from a 220MW power plant to be installed in Bhola. PDB officials said two contracts will be signed soon to use their facilities to be installed along the country’s coastline to import Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) to increase the gas supplies by 1,000 million cubic feet per day.
The government also finalised contracts to import 250,000 tonnes of diesel a year from India which would be increased to one million tonnes in near future, the officials said, adding that Bangladesh Petroleum Corporation (BPC) would pay Indian supplier $5.5 in premium for transportation, evaporation and other losses for each tonne of diesel to be imported.
The BPC, however, pays about $3.5 in premium to import each tonne of diesel from countries in Central Asia and the Middle East. On April 10, Petrobangla signed two memoranda of understanding one with India’s state-run Petronet LNG Limited and the other with Reliance for using their facilities to import LNG. Both the Indian companies are demanding higher charges for regasification of LNG than the charges quoted in the other two contracts Petrobangla signed recently.
The country’s dependency on power import will be raised by 42 percent in 2020 as per different power purchase agreements at higher prices from India.
According to Power Development Board (PDB), Bangladesh will import 7500MW electricity from the public and private sectors of India by that year.
Most of the contracts signed were without tenders which helped them charge higher prices, PDB officials said, adding that the contracts were awarded under the Speedy Supply of Power and Energy (Special Provisions) Act 2010.
Such contracts would make an imbalanced dependency for Bangladesh’s domestic power and energy sector on its largest neighbour, experts feared.
The deals signed so far with the Indian public and private sector energy
utilities in the past one year and the contracts set to be awarded to them have already claimed a major share of the country’s energy sources, they said. According to the government plan, about 25 per cent of natural gas and 18 per cent of diesel would be supplied by Indian utilities during this period.
Consumers Association of Bangladesh Energy Adviser M Shamsul Alam warned that such dependence on India would obstruct national capacity building, both in public and private sectors, and cause a threat to the energy security.
State Minister for Power, Energy and Mineral Resources Nasrul Hamid, however, sees no problem with importing electricity and primary energy.
‘Many conflicting nations are carrying out uninterrupted trade between them for years whereas relations between Bangladesh and India are much friendly now,’ he said.
Energy expert M Tamim, also a professor at Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology, said the government should pay more attention to the contracts’ technical issues, such as price, reliability and quality of energy to be supplied by Indian utilities.
On April 10, the last day of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s state visit to New Delhi, Bangladesh’s utilities signed six energy sector deals worth about $9 billion with their Indian counterparts. Since March 2016, the government has signed four contracts and finalised two more deals to be signed with Indian companies either to build power plants or to buy about 4,500MW electricity, officials said.
They said the Power Division is examining an Indian offer to export 400MW power to Bangladesh from a coal-fired power plant under construction near Haldia Port in West Bengal.
The government also plans to import about 2,600MW power from Nepal and Bhutan through India, the officials said.
India introduced a guideline in December 2016 that would bar Bangladesh from directly importing electricity from Nepal or Bhutan through Indian territory as the guideline allowed no such electricity transit.
According to the guideline, India will ‘facilitate’ such cross-border trade of electricity through its own agencies who are to buy electricity from a neighbouring country and sell it to other neighbour under separate bilateral agreements.
Bangladesh began importing 500MW electricity from India’s Western Grid since October 2013.
On April 10, 2017, PDB initialled two contracts, one with India’s Adani Power (Jharkhand) Ltd for importing electricity for 25 years from its 1,600MW power plant to be installed in India and the other with Reliance Bangladesh LNG & Power Ltd to buy electricity for 20 years from its 718MW gas-fired power plant to be installed in Narayanganj.
Both the Indian companies will charge higher tariff comparing to the other local companies, according to PDB officials.
The power board also signed a Memorandum of Understanding with India’s NTPC Vidyut Vyapar Nigam Ltd to import 500MW power from a hydropower facility to be built in Nepal by India’s private company GMR Ltd, they said.
The Indian company will transmit electricity from Nepal-India border to Bangladesh-India border.
The PDB also signed a supplementary agreement with the same Indian company to import 60MW power from Palatana gas-fired power plant in Tripura. In March 2016, Bangladesh began importing 100MW power from the facilities.
The 160MW power was surplus in India’s north-eastern provinces and would cost much higher.
In March 2016, the government approved a contract to be signed with India’s Shapoorji Pallonji Infrastructure Capital Company to buy electricity from a 220MW power plant to be installed in Bhola. PDB officials said two contracts will be signed soon to use their facilities to be installed along the country’s coastline to import Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) to increase the gas supplies by 1,000 million cubic feet per day.
The government also finalised contracts to import 250,000 tonnes of diesel a year from India which would be increased to one million tonnes in near future, the officials said, adding that Bangladesh Petroleum Corporation (BPC) would pay Indian supplier $5.5 in premium for transportation, evaporation and other losses for each tonne of diesel to be imported.
The BPC, however, pays about $3.5 in premium to import each tonne of diesel from countries in Central Asia and the Middle East. On April 10, Petrobangla signed two memoranda of understanding one with India’s state-run Petronet LNG Limited and the other with Reliance for using their facilities to import LNG. Both the Indian companies are demanding higher charges for regasification of LNG than the charges quoted in the other two contracts Petrobangla signed recently.
