BPC to import 160,000 tonnes of furnace oil in Q4

FE Team | Published: October 04, 2012 00:00:00 | Updated: February 01, 2018 00:00:00

M Azizur Rahman
State-owned Bangladesh Petroleum Corporation (BPC) will import 160,000 tonnes of furnace oil during fourth quarter of the current calendar year (2012) to meet the mounting oil requirements in oil-fired power plants, a top BPC official said Wednesday.
The BPC will import this quantity of furnace oil over October-December 2012 period from Malaysia's Petco, Emirates National Oil Company (ENOC), Vietnam's Petrolimex and Indonesia's Bumi Siak Pusako, said the official.
"We have concluded negotiations with the Asian suppliers to import furnace oil to meet the country's mounting furnace oil requirements," BPC Chairman Md Abubakar Siddique told the FE Wednesday.
The corporation could lower the premium rate by 3.19 per cent to $39.5 per tonne for the last quarter of 2012 to the Mean of Platts Singapore assessments.
The previous premium rate was $40.8 per tonne.
BPC would import 60,000 tonnes of furnace oil from Petco, the trading arm of Malaysia's state-owned Petronas, 40,000 tonnes from ENOC, 40,000 tonnes from Petrolimex and 20,000 tonnes fron Bumi Siak Pusako during October-December period.
The state-run oil import and marketing monopoly-BPC-has estimated that it will have to import 1.5 million tonnes of furnace oil for fiscal 2012-2013 (July-June), up by 76.47 per cent from 850,000 tonnes it imported a year ago.
BPC expects to import significantly higher quantity of furnace oil in the current fiscal as most of its oil-fired power plants will be operating, BPC has projected.
State-run Bangladesh Power Development Board (BPDB) has requested BPC to import 790,000 tonnes of furnace oil to run its oil-fired power plants over July-December, more than double the 320,000 tonnes it needed in January-June 2012 period.
Besides, Bangladesh Energy Regulatory Commission has hiked electricity tariffs several times this year to cut BPDB's losses and make the fuel oil-fired power plants operational.
BPC has also deals to import furnace oil from Egypt's Middle East Oil Refinery, Maldives National Oil Company and PetroChina until December 2012.
Bangladesh launched a drive to increase the number of oil-fired power plants in the country in mid-2010 amid fast-depleting natural gas resources, commissioning almost three dozen oil-based power plants to be built by 2012.
Most have already been commissioned.
BPC purchases the oil products from the international market and sells those at lower prices in the domestic market.
It borrows from various agencies and banks with major contributions from the Islamic Development Bank, to pay for its imports.
BPC also gets fiscal support as subsidy from government exchequer and the rest is arranged from sale proceeds.
Bangladesh's overall electricity generation is now hovering around 5,500 MW, of which around one-third is generated from oil-fired power plants.