Not a single international oil company (IOC) did come for bidding, finally, following open tendering by the state-run Petrobangla to attract foreign investment for bay hydrocarbon exploration, said sources.
"We were surprised to see that not a single IOC did submit bids by the close of bid-submission deadline on Monday," Petrobangla chairman Zanendra Nath Sarker told the FE.
Mr Sarker could not say the cause of the lack of interest from the IOCs in Bangladesh's offshore hydrocarbon resources.
But market-insiders said lack of confidence on part of the IOCs coupled with inadequate data on offshore blocks resulted in the blank sheet in the bidding.
"We shall evaluate the situation and analyse it," he said, after the upset his energy corporation saw.
Petrobangla was previously upbeat and hoping that a good number of IOCs would submit bids as around a dozen of the firms had purchased bid documents and kept enquiring on it for long.
The agency had put the offer on board for nine months after floating the international tender on March 10 for hydrocarbon exploration in the Bay of Bengal.
Twenty-four offshore blocks -- 15 in deep sea and nine in shallow sea - were on offer for exploration lease.
The 15 deep-sea blocks on offer are DS-08, DS-09, DS-10, DS-11, DS-12, DS-13, DS-14, DS-15, DS-16, DS-17, DS-18, DS-19, DS-20, DS-21 and DS-22.
The nine shallow-water blocks are SS-01, SS-02, SS-03, SS-05, SS-06, SS-07, SS-08, SS-10 and SS-11.
Production-sharing contracts (PSCs) were supposed to be inked with the IOCs in line with the newly approved model PSC through which the terms have been made 'lucrative' with more sweeteners for the contractors.
The gas price for the offered blocks will be tagged to the price of brent crude on the international market so that the gas price becomes flexible in line with the movement of global oil-price indices.
Over the last decade Bangladesh had launched only one bidding round - in 2017 - and that was only for three deep-water blocks, according to Petrobangla data.
Although Posco-Daewoo was awarded one deep-water block - DS-12 - after the bidding, the South Korean oil-and-gas exploration company left the block in 2020 after carrying out a 2D seismic survey. Previously Petrobangla had floated a bidding round in 2012, through which three shallow-water blocks and one deep-water block were awarded to contractors.
Currently, four IOCs have active PSCs, either individually or under joint venture, to explore three shallow-water blocks in Bangladesh.
U.S. oil-major Chevron is active in exploring and producing natural gas in three gas fields under onshore blocks 12, 13 and 14. Singapore's KrisEnergy is producing natural gas from the Bangura field under Block 9. ONGC Videsh and Oil India are jointly exploring shallow -water blocks SS-04 and SS-09.
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