Six local petroleum refineries, which production was suspended last year on charge of malpractice, have got conditional permission to resume operation, sources at the Energy Division said, reports UNB. The companies are Golden Condensate Oil Refinery Factory, CVO Petro Chemical Refinery, Lark Petroleum Company, Chowdhury Refinery, Synthetic Rosin Products, and JB Refinery. Contacted, Deputy Secretary at the Energy Division Akramuzzaman said these six companies were given permission to resume their operation on a number of conditions
which include maintaining ‘yield pattern’ in their productions and not involving in any malpractice in the future. An allegation was there that they were receiving condensates from different gas fields of Petrobangla and other international oil companies (IOCs) under contract with the government, but they were selling huge unrefined petroleum to different petrol pumps through black marketing violating the contract.
As a result, some unscrupulous petrol pumps started mixing those unrefined products with different petroleum oils like octane, petrol, diesel and kerosene and selling the contaminated ones to motor vehicles. Energy Division officials said that BSTI and Energy Ministry’s surveillance teams also found them selling these contaminated petroleum products.
Official records show that these six refineries were receiving 101,693 metric tonnes of condensates, but only selling 10,795 metric tonnes refined petroleum to Bangladesh Petroleum Corporation (BPC) while 90,898 metric tonnes or about 90 percent of the products were selling
to petrol pumps without refining the products. As per their contracts with the government, these refineries were only allowed to sell their products to the BPC, not to any petrol pump or elsewhere.
Statistics show that the country produced 532,297 million tonnes of condensates in 2015-16 of which state-owned Eastern Refinery received 51,608 metric tonnes while different fractionation plants under Petrobagla received 131,054 metric tonnes and the 13 private refineries received 344,045 metric tonnes. Later, a high-powered committee was formed to investigate the matters and make recommendations to the Energy Division.
The committee set a ‘yield pattern’ for the production of petroleum products and recommended strong monitoring of the private refineries’ operation. Finally, the sources said, the Energy Division decided to withdraw the suspension on the six companies and allowed to resume their operation. Before taking the decision, the Energy Division sought a permission of the Prime Minister’s office which they received on March 31.