Bangladesh News

The energy ministry has asked Bangladesh Petroleum Corporation (BPC) to urgently scrutinise the possibility of involving private sector in building a $700 million deep-sea petroleum unloading facility, sources say.

Alternatively, BPC would see if it is more practical to develop a cheaper $100 million unloading facility at the Customary Outer Anchorage point in Chittagong.

Such a facility should help BPC save more than 8 dollars per tonne during import and unloading petroleum. Presently, lack of this facility leads BPC to bear an unnecessary loss of $10.68 million while importing 13 lakh tonnes of crude oil annually.

Besides, without developing this facility, a project to expand the crude oil refinery capacity of the Eastern Refinery Ltd (ERL) won’t be meaningful.

According to three separate studies, the deep-sea facility may be developed 40 to 60 kilometres off the coast in Kutubdia. A cost-effective alternative is building the same at the outer anchorage point situated 4-10km off the coast.

“The advantage of the deep-sea platform is that it has a draught of more than 60 metres depth. Large ships carrying 100,000 to 200,000 tonnes of oil anchor near Kutubdia. Such a volume of oil can be instantly unloaded to ERL facility in the coast from the deep-sea platform using a 40-60km underground pipeline,” says an energy ministry official.

Currently, mother ships anchor here and smaller ships unload the oil (which is called lighterage) and transport it back to ERL dock. When a platform will be installed, anchored ships will be connected to a loading arm and an underground pipeline so that the oil can be instantly unloaded.

“But the disadvantage is the high investment requirement. The government has already been toying with this project for some time. A public sector project has been cleared in principle by the planning ministry and forwarded to the Economic Relations Division (ERD) for funding. But the funding has not yet been ensured,” a source points out.

“That’s why at a meeting earlier this month, it was suggested that this project be pursued on Build, Operate, Transfer (BOT) basis with private investment and that there be an alternative lower cost investment opportunity, which is doable and realistic. The BPC is looking into this matter now.”

The alternative is utilising the Customary Outer Anchorage (COA) area close to the port. The sea depth in this part allows anchorage of ships with up to 80,000 tonnes capacity.

“Sure this means a 200,000-tonne ship won’t be able to avail the unloading facility. But it would make way for large ships. The length of the underground pipeline will be much shorter and therefore the cost will be much lower,” the source quips.

However, for a ship to reach COA from the deep sea, there is a submerged high patch, which poses as a hurdle for heavy ships. Therefore, the ships from deep sea must drive to COA during high tide.

The BPC is very interested in the deep-sea facility and its Indian counterparts have offered cooperation in this regard. “But the point is this facility must be cost-effective. It’s easy to avail a finance of $100 million than $700 million,” an official observes.

The country annually requires 23 lakh tonnes of diesel, 5.2 lakh tonnes of kerosene, 2.5 lakh tonnes of jet fuel and 2.95 lakh tonnes of gasoline.

Of this, ERL processes imported crude oil and produces 4 lakh tonnes of diesel, 3.5 lakh tonnes of kerosene, 1 lakh tonnes of jet fuel and 1 lakh tonnes of gasoline. Two-third of the total oil consumed is imported as refined product at a much higher price.

To supplement the domestic oil demand growth of 10 percent the government must follow a policy of upgrading discharging facilities, storage capacity and crude oil refinery capacity.

The processing cost of crude oil at ERL is 70 percent cheaper than that in Singapore or other neighbouring countries.

Under a government plan, a new distillation column will be set up at ERL to increase the plant’s processing capacity to 1 lakh barrel per day from its present capacity of 35,000 barrels.

The expansion will enable ERL to refine majority of the petroleum requirement from imported crude oil and save huge foreign currency.

“Both ERL’s expansion and sea unloading facility scheme must be implemented side by side,” a source observes.