Petrobangla has floated tender for oil and gas exploration in three deep sea blocks —12, 16 and 21 — in the Bay of Bengal, offering international oil companies more commercial benefits and stake in the produces, officials said. In a notice, the state-run oil, gas and mineral resources corporation asked the interested IOCs to submit their proposals to the corporation addressing its chairman by 11:00am on January 12 next year.
Petrobangla issued the notice on Sunday.
Pursued by a number of IOCs, Petrobangla revised the Model Production Sharing Contract 2012, halting a tendering process it
floated on December 17 last year.
The revisions include an increase of gas price to $6.5 per thousand cubic feet from $5, annual price escalation, 70 per cent increased annual cost recovery limit from 55 per cent, tax waiver for contractor for the entire project life, no transmission tariff, privilege of selling 50 per cent of contractor’s shared gas to a third party within Bangladesh.
Petrobangla, instead of an IOC, will pay taxes to the government.
In the notice, Petrobangla said that a bidder, singly or in association with other oil-gas companies, can bid for one or more blocks. Contracts will be signed with the successful bidders in line with the Revised Model Production Sharing Contract 2012.
Initially, Petrobangla floated the international tenders for oil and gas exploration in the three deep sea blocks along with other nine shallow sea blocks — 2, 3, 4, and 6 to 11.
Petrobangla received only four bids from three IOCs for oil and gas exploration in four shallow sea blocks.
Indian Oil and Natural Gas Corporation Videsh submitted bids for exploration in shallow-sea blocks 4 and 9 and the US oil giant ConocoPhillips submitted a bid for exploration in shallow sea block 7 in the first phase and Santos-Krisenergy joint-venture submitted a bid for shallow sea hydrocarbon block 1.
-With New Age input
