Higher fuel import to put pressure on reserve
Saturday, 26 February 2011
About 4.8 million tonnes of petroleum oil will be required for the current calendar year, up by 1.05 million tonnes from the previous year' s demand, according to government estimate, reports UNB.
A top official of the state-owned Bangladesh Petroleum Corporation (BPC) said the import cost will stand around US$ 5.0 billion.
Experts have expressed the fear that the present political turmoil in the Middle-East and Africa might inflate the oil import bill further as oil price is soaring in the international market. They said it might also put pressure on the country's foreign exchange reserve.
In 2010, the country's petroleum demand was 3.75 million tonnes.
To meet the current year's total requirement, the government will import about 3.4 million tonnes of refined oil and the rest crude.
According to official sources, the installation of a good number of liquid fuel-based power plants recently has pushed up the demand for petroleum in the current year.
Under an aggressive move, the government signed contracts for setting up 33 power plants in the last one year to generate about 2,600 MW of electricity. Most of these plants are rental power plants from which the government will buy electricity for consumers.
These rental plants are expected to commence operation gradually from March this year. Most of these are costly liquid fuel-fired plants to which, as per contracts, the govern
ment will have to supply petroleum.
Among these plants, some will use diesel and some others furnace oil for power generation.
As per BPC statistics, in the first six months of the year from January to June, its imports will total 330,000 tonnes of furnace oil for the rental power plants.
Similarly, BPC will need to import 1.58 million metric tonnes of diesel to meet the demand for power plants as well as for other consumers like motor vehicles and irrigation pumps.
To ensure the smooth supply, the government has already signed agreements with a number of international petroleum supply agencies of different countries. Some contracts were signed to import petroleum on state-to-state basis from different Middle-Eastern and Asian countries.