Energy exploration

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Unscrupulous oil companies are capable of doing a great damage to a country's energy resources if it happens to be unlucky in not having capable and honest government. Some African countries do provide here good examples about these countries of this nature is not capable of doing the needful for upholding national interests. In such a situation, the vested interests within such international oil companies attempt to have controlling positions in decision-making in the vital area of energy exploration and production. Ultimately, the outcome of all these is that such vested interests gain mastery over the energy resource of a poorly-governed country.
Against this backdrop, it will not be out of place to note here that Bangladesh has not been successful enough to develop an effective model to deal with its energy sector-related matters during the last two decades. It has had substantial capacities for energy exploration and production within its land territories. Here the failure to help develop properly the national organisation for exploring and producing energy sources has been one of the major problems.
Developmental allocations were purposefully denied to such a national organisation so that it could gradually become disabled in every way.
Even the buying of a few rigs had to be put off because of non-availability of funds. Furthermore, no steps were taken to man the related national organisation with skilled hands and attractive compensation package and also to curb corruption.
In this context, it is only befitting that proper steps are initiated at the earliest to exploit the country's natural resources and optimise their use, while safeguarding the long-term national interests.
Enayetur Rahim
Gulshan,
Dhaka