Energy and Mineral Resources Division has initiated a move to formulate a policy for the import of petroleum which may bring an end to Bangladesh Petroleum Corporation’s (BPC’s) ‘monopoly’ in selecting foreign companies, reports UNB. Official sources said the Energy Division has proposed seven criteria in its draft policy to determine the companies to import petroleum under the G-to-G deals. It said that a state-owned company must be 100 per cent state-owned one to become eligible for supply.
The company must have the annual export volume of minimum 2 million mt of petroleum having a turnover $5 billion and 5 years oil export experience. The company should not face any embargo by international agencies like the UN, Opec or WTO.
The crude oil supplier must have production sharing contract (PSC) with its own country or any other country. However, nothing was said about tendering method to select a private supplier.
Energy Division’s deputy secretary Farzana Momtaz said the proposed petroleum import policy is yet to be finalised. “It’s still under process,” she said.
At present, there is no specific policy or guideline for the import of petroleum from global markets although the country has to import about 5 million metric tonnes of both crude and refined petroleum fuel. Of the amount, crude oil accounts for about 1.5 million while the rest is refined oil.
For the last several years, the government has been importing refined oil from state-owned companies of different countries under separate state-to-state or G-to-G (government-to-government) deals.
But there is no guideline that how much bulk fuel should be imported from which companies or countries. The practice is that Bangladesh Petroleum Corporation (BPC), the state-owned petroleum importing agency, just negotiates with the companies and settles the quantity of import on bilateral basis.