The departure of Azerbaijan's state-run oil and gas company Socar AQS from Bangladesh has thrown half a dozen local and international energy service providers into trouble.
Socar left the country without finishing the drilling job it was assigned for, a senior Petrobangla official said.
The Azerbaijani firm also kept its dues to the international oil and gas service providers unpaid.
This is the first such incident in which an international oil company left drilling job half way through without making payments to the relevant service providers.
The companies that have yet to get payments from Socar against their services
include Schlumberger, Derrick Solutions International Pte Ltd, KN Harbour, Arnib and KS Internation.
Socar AQS owes around Tk 380 million to these firms in total, it has been alleged.
These oil and gas service providers were assigned by the Azerbeijan firm for various kinds of job to facilitate drilling of gas wells.
The companies have provided drilling equipment, including rig after the successful negotiations with Socar AQS.
But Socar AQS did not make either partial or full payments despite getting their services, the service providers alleged.
Most of them have already written several times to Socar AQS to get back their arrears.
Some of these firms also sought return of their delivered goods in case of Socar's failure to make the outstanding payments.
Without any feedback, they also wrote to the energy and mineral resources division, state-run Petrobangla and Petrobangla's subsidiary Bangladesh Petroleum Exploration and Production Company Ltd seeking remedy.
Officials said Socar AQS drilled only one onshore gas well--Semutang South -1 -- in Khagrachhari out of three gas wells owned by Bapex, but found the field dry.
Begumganj-4 in Noakhali and Motherganj-1 of Jamalpur were the two other gas wells, Socar AQS was bound to drill under the contract between Bapex and the company aimed at ramping up the country's natural gas production.
People familiar with the situation said the Socar ASQ was appointed by Bapex in 2017 for conducting drilling of three onshore gas wells at a cost of around $33 million.
The Azerbaijani firm was paid around $11.8 million against the Semutang well drilling.
But the dispute emerged when Socar moved to drill the Begumganj well as the Azerbaijani company claimed an additional amount of $6 million in advance for preparatory work, the people said.
In a letter in June, Socar informed Bapex about its decision to terminate the contract as it was not paid within 28 working days of completion of the work, they added.
Socar missed the deadline, however, said the people.
They said the cost of drilling by Socar was among the lowest compared to deals with other foreign firms involved in similar drilling job assigned by Bapex.
Bapex has been awarding the drilling job to international oil and gas exploration companies over the past several years due to technical and manpower constraints.
Currently, the country's overall natural gas production is around 3,118 million cubic feet per day, including the supply of re-gasified liquefied natural gas to the tune of around 571 mmcf a day, according to Petrobangla statistics as on October 10, 2019.
Gas production from eight gas fields owned by Bapex was around 106 mmcf a day against their production capacity of around 145 mmcf.
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