15 foreign firms vie for deal

Fifteen international firms are vying for contract to build country's first land-based liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal at Matarbari on Moheshkhali Island in the Bay of Bengal, as the government opted for import of the fuel to meet a growing demand.        
They have submitted expressions of interest (EoIs) to Power Cell, a state-owned entity under the Ministry of Power, Energy and Mineral Resources (MPEMR), by the bid-submission deadline that was over on June 30, said Power Cell Director- General Mohammad Hossain.
The firms that submitted bids are Fluor Global Engineering Construction Company, Shell International Ltd, Petronet Energy Ltd, China National Air Separation Plant Co Ltd, LNG Engineering Technology Centre China, Toyo Engineering India Ltd, Astra Transcor Energy, China Hope Energy Investment Ltd, Mitsui & Co. Ltd, AOT Trading AG, China Huanqiu Contracting & Engineering Corporation, Tractebel Engineering, China State Construction Engineering Corporation, H Energy Pvt Ltd, and Union Ltd.
This onshore terminal would be country's second LNG terminal, the other one planned as an offshore one.
The Power Cell issued a tender seeking EoIs from international companies in mid-April to build an onshore LNG-import terminal in the south, with a handling capacity of 3.5 million tonne per year capacity, Khan said.
"Gas from the planned terminal will be supplied to gas-fired power plants," he said.
The land-based terminal will be set up on build-own-operate basis.
The winner will take a majority stake in the planned terminal, acting as engineering, procurement and construction contractor, and will be responsible for the designing and commissioning of the terminal encompassing receiving, offloading, storage, and re-gasification facilities.
Other partners in the planned LNG terminal are the state-owned Bangladesh Power Development Board and the International Finance Corporation's IFC InfraVentures fund.
Regasified LNG from the terminal would be sold on a long-term, take-or-pay basis to a state-owned entity, which will have back-to-back gas-sale agreements with power-plant owners or operators and other customers.
The Power Cell had extended the bid-submission deadline thrice from the initial deadline of May 18, 2014 to facilitate EoIs submissions by the potential investors.
Separately, the state-owned Petrobangla also had signed a preliminary agreement with US Astra Oil and Excelerate Energy to build the country's first LNG-import terminal on June 26. The US consortium will pay for the construction of the floating storage and re-gasification unit at the Moheshkhali Island.
The agreement was reached Wednesday, capping several years of negotiations.
A final deal is to be inked on completion of legal vetting and approval by a Bangladeshi cabinet committee.
The LNG terminal might cost Astra and Excelerate $500 million to build, Petrobangla Chairman Hussain Monsur said.
Petrobangla will have to pay the consortium $91.16 million annually over 15 years on a take-or-pay basis, meaning it would have to pay whether or not it imports LNG through the terminal.
The petroleum corporation initially issued a tender for the offshore terminal in June 2010. Ten companies then submitted the expressions of interest.
The terminal would have a capacity of 5 million tonnes per year and a regasification capacity of at least 500 million cubic feet per day (mmcfd).
It will have berthing and mooring facilities for LNG tankers with a capacity of 138,000-260,000 cubic metres, with the construction contract to be awarded on a build-own-operate-transfer basis for 15 years.
Bangladesh inked a memorandum of understanding with Qatar in January 2011 to import 4 million tonnes per year of LNG from Qatar Petroleum.
Bangladesh extended the MOU with Qatar until June 2015. They have not yet signed a final import deal.
LNG terminals are necessary for Bangladesh, which is reeling from an acute gas crisis due to fast depletion of the current reserves and the dearth of new discoveries. The crunch has prompted the country to go for rationing supplies.
The country's natural gas output is around 2,320 mmcfd against a known demand for 3,000 mmcfd.