The country would require importing a total of around 1.77 million tonnes of refined oil products to generate electricity at oil-fired power plants in 2014, up around 18 per cent from the outgoing year, a senior official has said.
It would have to import around 1.43 million tonnes of furnace oil and 335,000 tonnes of diesel exclusively to generate electricity next year, he said.
State-owned Bangladesh Petroleum Corporation (BPC) will import the lion's share of the fuel requirement for power plants, while some privately-owned electricity generation companies would also import fuel of their own to generate electricity at their plants.
Bangladesh Power Development Board (BPDB), a state owned entity, has informed BPC of the oil requirement for the next calendar year to generate electricity at the oil-fired power plants as per its planning, a senior BPC official said.
Fuel requirement at the oil-fired power plants will increase in the next year as some new such plants will start operation from 2014, a senior BPDB official said.
Besides, the BPDB, the country's lone buyer of electricity from power plants, will have to rely more on oil-fired power plants in the next year as the prospects for other new energy sources for generating electricity, including natural gas, are bleak, he said.
BPC, the country's oil import and marketing monopoly, has already finalised term-contracts with suppliers to import around 3.74 million tonnes of refined oil products in 2014.
The import volume for 2014 is slightly less than the 3.89 million tonnes that BPC estimated for full-year 2013 imports.
As per the deals with the oil suppliers, BPC would be able to import more oil products, if necessary, the BPC official said.
Under the term-deals for 2014, BPC will import 2.70 million tonnes of diesel, 700,000 tonnes of furnace oil, 300,000 tonnes of jet fuel, 30,000 tonnes of octane and 10,000 tonnes of kerosene, he said.
BPC also expects to import around 1.40 million tonnes of crude oil from Saudi Aramco and Abu Dhabi National Oil Company during 2014.
Bangladesh launched a drive to increase its oil-based power generation in mid-2010 as its natural gas resources started depleting, and plans to bring over three dozen new plants online by the end of 2013.
Currently, 35 oil-fired plants are operational across the country.
Of the total power plants, 23, with a combined electricity generation capacity of 1,787 megawatts (mw), run on furnace oil and the remainder, with the electricity generation capacity of 393mw, run on diesel.
The BPC used to import a total of around 3.50 million tonnes of fuel before the new power plants came online in 2010, BPC statistics revealed.
BPC currently has term-deals for refined oil product imports with Kuwait Petroleum Corp.; Petco, the trading arm of Malaysia's state-owned Petronas; the Philippine National Oil Co.; Emirates National Oil Co.; Egypt's Middle East Oil Refinery; Maldives National Oil Co.; state-owned PetroChina; and Indonesia's Bumi Siak Pusako.
It also has deals in place to import crude oil with Saudi Aramco and the Abu Dhabi National Oil Co.
The country's sole refinery, operated by BPC's subsidiary Eastern Refinery Ltd (ERL), is expected to produce about 1.4 million tonnes of refined products in 2014.
Oil-fired power plants to devour 1.77m tonnes of refined oil next year
M Azizur Rahman | Published: December 14, 2013 00:00:00 | Updated: November 30, 2025 06:01:00
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