India has proposed to install a Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) terminal in Kutubdia of Chittagong. The country is willing to supply bottled Gas to its northeast states by using this terminal. However, Bangladesh intends to take a decision by further negotiation regarding this issue.
An Energy Dialogue between Bangladesh and India was arranged in Delhi on Monday and both countries have discussed on their respective interest regarding the energy sector including this LNG terminal issue.
Though none of the participant countries could come up with a decision on the price point of the fuel that is to be imported from India, they discussed it on that dialogue program. Still, India stated that it has no objection if Bangladesh wishes to connect with the TAPI (Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India) pipeline. On the other hand, India informed that provisionally it will not export Gas from Tripura through pipeline
Bangladesh Energy and Mineral Resources Division Secretary Md Nazimuddin is leading the five-member Bangladesh team at the dialogue with Indian side led by the Petroleum and Natural Gas secretary K D Tripathi. The following dialogue is to be held in the coming January at Dhaka.
Bangladesh is desperately looking for importing natural gas from the Indian state of Tripura through the pipeline. But India is not interested in exporting that Gas. However, all they are interested is in exporting electricity from Tripura that is produced from that Gas. Currently, Bangladesh is importing 100 MW of electricity from Tripura.
The installation of the mega TAPI gas pipeline is ongoing and Bangladesh expressed its willingness to connect with that pipeline. India stated that it has no objection if Bangladesh can manage to connect with the TAPI pipeline. Moreover, India will assist Bangladesh to connect.
In that dialogue, the high officials have discussed the exploitative Diesel import agreement from the Numaligarh Refinery Limited. But they couldn’t agree at the price point of the Diesel that is to be imported from Nualigarh. Already, Bangladesh imported a batch of Diesel recently. Bangladesh paid $7 in premium for each barrel of diesel which is relatively much higher than that of importing from Arab countries.