Bangladesh and India have signed a memorandum of understanding to construct a pipeline for supply of high speed diesel, it was announced on Thursday.
“Numaligarh Refinery Limited (NRL) and Bangladesh Petroleum Corporation (BPC) are working on details for the envisaged project of supply of high speed diesel (HSD) from Numaligarh (in Assam) to Parbatipur in Bangladesh for a period of 20 years under a JV project between NRL and BPC,” external affairs ministry spokesman Vikas Swarup said at a media briefing here.
“The product will be transported through a pipeline of approximately 135 km of which 130 km will be in Bangladesh and five km in India,” he said.
The pipeline will run from Siliguri in West Bengal to Parbatipur in Bangladesh.
Swarup said, as a goodwill gesture, an initial consignment of 2,200 tonnes of diesel would be transported from Siliguri to Parbatipur by 50 wagons of the Indian Railways.
“This train will be flagged off from Siliguri on March 17 by Minister of State for Petroleum and Natural Gas, Dharmendra Pradhan,” he said.
The decision to construct the pipeline was taken during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Dhaka in June 2015.