Drilling at Mubarakpur gas-field begins

FE Team | Published: August 24, 2014 00:00:00 | Updated: November 30, 2026 06:01:00

PABNA, Aug 23 (UNB): Bangladesh Petroleum Exploration and Production Company (Bapex) on Friday started drilling at Mubarakpur gas-field in Sathia upazila of the district.
Petrobangla Chairman Prof Hossain Monsur inaugurated the drilling work around 11am at the gas-field, the first of its kind in the country's northern region.
Bapex explorers noted that the 'Mubarakpur Oil-Gas Exploration Well Project' is a new geological structure for them to deal with.
Talking to reporters after the inauguration, the Petrobangla chairman said, "Exploration of oil-gas at this new geological structure is a challenging job. Bapex has started it. Hope, we'll be successful here."
Project director Golam Mostafa said the exploration involves a 5,000-metre drilling into the ground. "It'll take about four months to drill it whether hundred per cent of the oil-gas reserve can be explored to be ascertained after that."
According to Bapex officials, the site has 200 to 1000 billion CFT of gas and 2.1 barrel of oil reserves.
On completion of a five-year joint seismic survey by Petrobangla and German company Prakla Seismos in 1984, Mubarakpur, situated in Sujanagar upazila, was identified as a prospective site.
On April 26, 1986, German Geological Advisory Group and Petrobangla jointly submitted a proposal to undertake the Mubarakpur project to ascertain the reserves of oil and gas in the area. Petrobangla accepted the proposal and the government approved it on September 6, 1987.
But the project could not make any progress till March 8, 1993 when the Energy Ministry approved a revised drilling proposal.
Later, the then government in the 2004-2005 fiscal took a project for oil and gas exploration at Mubarakpur under Annual Development Programme (ADP). The Tk 564 million Mubarakpur project got Ecnec approval in 2006.
A follow-up survey was conducted there in February 2008, stretching over a 160.38-km area using the 2-D method and the results showed that there are huge reserves of gas and oil at the Mubarakpur site.