Energy Bangla - Petrobangla holds Road-show on March 30-31 in city

Petrobangla is going to hold its planned international road-show in the city on March 30-31, aiming to attract foreign oil companies to participate in offshore hydrocarbon block-bidding.

Official sources said the road-show was originally scheduled for March 23-24, but Petrobangla shifted the schedule responding to the requests from the potential bidders due to Easter Saturday.

However, Petrobangla failed to secure permission of the Energy Ministry to hold two other planned international road-shows abroad.

The state-owned hydrocarbon agency had offered to hold one of the overseas road-shows in Singapore and another in either the US or Canada .

But the Energy Ministry was found reluctant to give its go-ahead, as it said that all the previous road-shows, held during the 2nd round bidding, failed to achieve the target.

Petrobangla invited international bidding on February 15 asking the international oil companies (IOCs) to submit their respective offers by May 7, 2008 for deep-sea oil and gas exploration.

Petrobangla officials said about 20 IOCs have shown keen interest to participate in the road-show to be held in Dhaka . "We've received an encouraging response from the IOCs, and they're contacting us to participate in the bidding," said a senior official.

The caretaker government approved a proposal and a new model Production Sharing Contract (PSC) in the first week of February. The government has a plan to complete the bidding by September, and award contracts to the selected firms by August-October 2008 to utilize the next dry season for offshore exploration work.

Under the model PSC, the country's maritime area has been divided into 28 blocks for the hydrocarbon exploration. Of the blocks, eight are located in shallow waters, while the rest 20 blocks in deep-sea area.

For the shallow blocks, a total of eight years' time will be given to the contractors, and they will have to conduct exploration within three years as initial period. Then another two years will be given for extended exploration, and another two years for second-time extension.

For the deep-sea blocks in the Bay of Bengal , the contractors will get a total of nine years to carry out exploration work. Of the time, five years will be given for initial exploration, and then it will be extended in two phases. They will get two years as the first extension and another two years as the second extension.

On completion of the exploration, the contractor will submit a 25-year development plan for gas-field and 20-year plan for oil-field. However, they can extend the plan period by an additional five years, provided Petrobangla's consent.

The first round of bidding for striking hydrocarbons in the country was held in 1994. The second round took place in 1998 with the whole countries offshore and onshore areas divided into 22 blocks.

A total of eight blocks were allocated to the IOCs under a number of PSCs for oil and gas exploration under the second-round bidding.

The move for 3rd-round bidding was initiated during the immediate-past BNP-led alliance government. But after a long break of about 10 years from the second-round bidding, the 3rd round finally got a physical move under the caretaker government as it approved the model PSC.