An international consultant will be appointed to facilitate evaluating the expressions of interest (EoIs) received from parties to build the country's first land-based liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal at Matarbari on Moheshkhali Island in the Bay of Bengal, a senior official said.
The consultant, to be hired by Power Cell, will be a part of the committee of the Power Cell, an entity under the Ministry of Power, Energy and Mineral Resources (MPEMR), assigned to evaluate the EoIs, he said.
"We have moved to appoint the consultant in line with suggestions from the International Finance Corporation (IFC)," said a senior Power Cell official.
Fifteen international firms have showed interest in the venture to build the LNG terminal on the Moheshkhali Island.
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.
The onshore LNG terminal would be country's second LNG terminal.
Power Cell had issued a tender seeking EoI from international companies in mid-April to build the onshore LNG-import terminal in the south, with a handling capacity of 3.5 million tonnes per year, Khan said.
Gas from the planned terminal will be supplied to gas-fired power plants, he said.
The land-based LNG terminal will be built under 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 design and commissioning of the terminal encompassing receiving, offloading, storage and re-gasification facilities.
Other partners in the planned LNG terminal are 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.
Separately, the state-owned Petrobangla Bangladesh signed a preliminary agreement with the 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 Moheshkhali.
The agreement was reached Wednesday after 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 "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 meters, with the construction contract to be awarded on build-own-operate-transfer basis for 15 years.
Bangladesh inked a memorandum of understanding with Qatar in January 2011 to import 4 million tonnes of LNG per year from Qatar Petroleum.
Bangladesh has 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 the fast depletion of current reserves and the dearth of new discoveries and is rationing supplies.
The country's natural gas output hovers around 2,320 mmcfd against the demand for 3,000 mmcfd.
