Thursday, April 25, 2024
Gazprom EP International BV started drilling a well in Bhola’s Shahbazpur gas field on Friday in the presence of Energy Secretary Mahbub Hossain and amid experts’ criticism.
Petrobangla says the well will be drilled to a depth of about 3,500 metres and 20-25 mmcf/d of gas is expected to be obtained from there.
Gazprom will drill three wells in Bhola at a cost of about Tk 600 crore. The two others are Bhola North’s exploration well Elisha-1 and development well Bhola North-2.
Experts say Gazprom got the job without an international tender and would take more than twice as much as the state-owned Bangladesh Petroleum Exploration and Production Company (BAPEX) for it.
Energy expert Professor Shamsul Alam said there was no competition as the work was given to Gazprom without a tender under the special energy supply act.
Petrobangla officials believe drilling the wells will play a major role in combating the current energy crisis in the country.
But experts say it is not possible to solve the crisis even if Bhola gets more gas now as there is no transmission line to bring it to the mainland.
This is the reason why BAPEX is extracting 50 mmcf/d of gas from the Shahbazpur field despite its capacity to do twice as much, they add.
A Petrobangla official said the project site to drill the exploratory well in the Bhola North gas field was handed over to Gazprom on March 5 while BAPEX cooperated by providing the necessary geological data.
There has been a controversy for a long time about giving work to Gazprom by excluding BAPEX. The Bhola gas field was discovered by BAPEX, and the company also drilled several wells. Sources said the maximum cost of drilling such wells would have been Tk 85 crore if BAPEX did it while Gazprom would be paid about Tk 200 crore.
In the last 11 years, Gazprom drilled 17 wells in Bangladesh, including exploration and development. The contract price of the first 10 wells was around $19.3 million, and the company took more than $1.9 million for each.
The drilling of the remaining seven wells involved a contract price of just over $6 million each. Although Gazprom drills wells at higher prices, the experience of getting gas from those wells is not pleasant, said experts.
Gazprom EP is the international subsidiary of the Russian state-owned energy giant Gazprom and has been drilling wells in Bangladesh since 2012.
