A dozen private petrochemical and refinery plants have sought the interim government's intervention to resume operation and produce refined petroleum products to meet the country's growing needs.
They were allegedly forced to shut down in July 2020 following "unfair" interference from the then government high-ups.
"We were bound to shut our plants as the state-run gas entities stopped supplying condensate, the raw material for our factories, from July 2020 unilaterally without prior notice," Petrochemical and Refiners Association of Bangladesh (PRAB) President Md Mamun Salam told The Financial Express Monday.
As a result, bank loans of around Tk 20 billion borrowed against the plants remained stuck for years, and about 5,000 employees became jobless, he added.
"We requested the previous Awami League government time and again to allocate necessary condensate for our plants so that we could resume operations, but they did not pay heed to us," said Mr Mamun.
These fractionation plants use natural gas condensate, a low-density mixture of hydrocarbon liquids present as gaseous components in the raw natural gas produced in gas fields, as their raw material to produce petroleum products like diesel, petrol, and octane.
The state-run Petrobangla and its subsidiary natural gas-producing companies had supplied condensate to the plants till June 30, 2020, the PRAB president said.
According to him, the government, as per the licensing terms of the plants, is supposed to supply condensate to keep them operational.
"We obtained licences from the Energy and Mineral Resources Division under the Ministry of Power, Energy and Mineral Resources to run our business."
The state-owned gas entities had supplied condensate regularly to the private fractionation plants during their operations, while the subsidiary marketing and distribution companies under the state-run Bangladesh Petroleum Corporation (BPC) had purchased petrol from them, he added.
The plants would produce 80 research octane number (RON) gasoline, mostly known as petrol, which the BPC's subsidiary companies had purchased regularly, he said.
Before stopping condensate supply to the plants, the BPC had upgraded the RON requirement to 87, and thereafter to 89, to facilitate the operations of two private petrochemical plants, Mr Mamun alleged.
Of the two fortunate companies, which had good terms with the then government high-ups, one was supposed to use imported condensate to produce 95 RON gasoline and the remaining one to use naphtha, a by-product from Eastern Refinery Ltd, to produce petroleum products, he said.
But instead of using imported condensate and naphtha, both companies had started getting local condensate allocation from July 2020 at the cost of the dozen petrochemical and fractionation plants, the PRAB leader alleged.
PRAB recently submitted a letter, signed by Mr Mamun, to the adviser of the Ministry of Power, Energy and Mineral Resources to get back the condensate allocation to resume operations.
It sought an allocation of at least 2,500 barrels of condensate for the 12 closed plants.
The country's overall production of condensate is around 7,000 barrels per day, according to Petrobangla.
Azizjst@yahoo.com
