Energy Bangla

Bangladesh Oil, Gas and Mineral Corporation, short-named Petrobangla, has received bids from five joint-venture geophysical companies for mapping out hydrocarbon deposits in the Bay of Bengal.
The state-owned energy monopoly invited bidders to survey potential reserves of the country’s energy resources aimed at ensuring energy security here.
It’s really a good response to conduct 2D multi-client seismic survey offshore, said Petrobangla officials on Sunday.
Petrobangla hopes to award the job by May through completing an evaluation.
It has received bids from joint ventures like Tomlinson Geophysical Services Inc and Schlumberger, Russian DMNG JSC, US-based Geotrace Technologies, China National Petroleum Corporation and Norwegian Dolphin Geophysical.
Petrobangla is hopeful to complete the task within two years, the officials told.
The qualified bidder would be able to sell its procured data on hydrocarbon concentrates in the bay to international oil companies by 10 years, he said.
Petrobangla would not pay the awarded companies for surveys. A total of 19 firms procured bidding documents, whereas almost 15 joint-venture companies participated in the bidding process.
The officials said the contractors would get two years’ time for data capture, processing and interpretation, adding that the total tenure of the agreement with the contractors would be 10 years.
A new bidding round to drill oil and gas in the Bay of Bengal will begin on conclusion of the surveys, with the findings in hand, he said. “We’re taking preparation for the next bidding process.
The survey would cover around 75,000-sqkm area in the bay with the water depth ranging between 20 metres and above 2,500 metres.
The maritime areas of the country have been divided into 20 offshore blocks in the bay where the surveys would be carried out. The areas where Bangladesh’s lone exploration company Bangladesh Petroleum Exploration and Production Company Ltd (Bapex), a subsidiary of Petrobangla, and international oil companies have been carrying out explorations are kept outside the purview of the seismic survey programme.
The survey aims to provide the oil and gas industry with 2D non-exclusive multi-client seismic data of offshore areas in order to help with basin evaluation, prospect generation and robust bid participation.
This is for the first time Bangladesh has floated tender for conducting 2D seismic survey alone by foreign firms.