Efforts on for int’l bidding within a month for gas exploration: energy secy

Energy Secretary Md Khairuzzaman Mozumder today said the government has planned to invite international bidding for offshore hydrocarbon exploration within a month.

"Last week, the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs approved the New Model Production Sharing Contract (PSC). Now we're making our highest efforts to go for international bidding within a month," he told a webinar.

The Energy and Mineral Resources Division of the Ministry of Power, Energy and Mineral Resources organised the webinar to observe "the National Energy Security Day".

The energy secretary said the government is assuming that this time a huge response will be received from international oil companies (IOCs) as the Model PSC has been modified making it more attractive.

"We're already getting some positive indications in this regard," he added.

He said the government has been working for ensuring energy security and as part of it, LNG is being imported to supply the gas to the industries on priority basis.

Dr Tawfiq Elahi said the issue of gas exploration has to be on a realistic basis.

"It's unrealistic to determine a gas reserve in any place until we find gas through drilling," he said, adding that the possibility of having new 10 trillion cubic feet (TCF) of gas at different locations could be a classroom lecture.

"But until we drill and find it, we should not have prospects of 10 TCF gas," he said, criticising Prof Anwar Hossain's statistics about prospects of new gas in the country.

Anwar Hossain in his speech said if the government drills 18 new wells, it can find 9-10 TCF gas easily as the country's success ratio in drilling is 1:3.Power Division Secretary Habibur Rahman said the government has taken a move to generate 2,000-3,000 MW of electricity from renewable sources in the next 2-3 years.