Dhaka looks to Moscow for oil, gas exploration

DHAKA - Bangladesh has offered Russian energy corporation Gazprom joint venture projects in oil and gas sector after lukewarm response to its bids from the western multi-national corporations.

State sector Petrobangla’s chairman Hossain Mansur said that they were hopeful of signing agreements at the end of next February when Gazprom’s chairman Viktor Zubkov visits here.

Petrobangla offered Gazprom the chance to make joint venture investments in oil and gas exploration in five remote areas, including Patiya, Kachalong, Jaldi and Sita Hills in Chittagong.

It also offered setting up of the Jalalabad-Bibiyana-Dhanua 190-km gas pipeline, along with two compressor stations in Chittagong and the western side of Jamuna river, and two processing plants in the state-run gas fields and a well.

Hossain Mansur told the New Age newspaper that Gazprom was the largest energy corporation in the world, and its chief Zubkov, who was also the first deputy prime minister of Russia, was visiting Bangladesh as a follow-up of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s visit to Russia last month.

Petrobangla needed to set up more gas pipe lines from Sylhet in the northeastern region where it has been planning to set up compressor and pumping stations to improve gas supply in the country.

Although it allotted a block to an Irish firm and two to Americans, Bangladesh’s bid to invite western MNC for oil and gas exploration, both on and offshore, have met with limited success.

Dhaka also needs to clearly demarcate its maritime boundary, being sandwiched as it is by neighbours India and Myanmar.