Power Cell has selected three international firms from five for awarding contract to build the country’s first onshore LNG terminal at Matarbari in Moheshkhali Island in the Bay of Bengal, sources said.
The selected firms are Japan’s Mitsui & Company Ltd, India’s Petronet LNG Ltd, and Royal Dutch’s Shell EP International Ltd.
The evaluation committee of Power Cell, a state-owned entity under the ministry of power, energy and mineral resources (MoPEMR), having representative from International Finance Corporation (IFC), has selected these firms for the project work and sent the evaluation report to the MoPEMR and the IFC, a senior Power Cell official said.
The selected firms would be requested to submit final proposals, including costs and equipment and technology to be accepted to build the terminal, he added. Gas from the proposed terminal is expected to be supplied to gas-based industries, including power plants and factories, the official said.
The planned onshore terminal would be the country’s second liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal.Power Cell floated tender in mid-April last year, seeking expressions of interest (EOIs) from international companies to build the onshore LNG import terminal in the south-with a handling capacity of 3.5 million tonnes per year-on a build, own and operate basis.
The bid winning company will get a majority stake in the planned terminal, acting as an engineering, procurement and construction contractor.It will be responsible for the design and commissioning of the terminal which will have receiving, offloading, storage and re-gasification facilities.
Other partners in the planned LNG terminal are state-owned Bangladesh Power Development Board and the International Finance Corporation’s IFC Infra Ventures fund.
Regasified LNG from the terminal would be sold on a long term, take-or-pay basis to a state-owned entity, which will have back-to-back gas sales agreements with power plant owners or operators and other customers.
Power Cell had extended the deadline for bid submission three times from the initial deadline of May 18, 2014 to facilitate submissions by potential investors.
Separately on January 25, state-owned Petrobangla inked a term sheet for LNG terminal use agreement with US’s Excelerate Energy Ltd Partnership for building the country’s first floating LNG terminal at Moheshkhali.The Excelerate will also carry out a geotechnical study, detail engineering design before starting construction of the LNG terminal that will be a floating storage and re-gasification unit.Excelerate Energy will build the terminal within 16 months after the final deal. LNG import through the offshore terminal might start from early 2017, a senior Petrobangla official said.
The floating LNG terminal would have a capacity of 5 million tonnes per year and a re-gasification capacity of at least 500 million cubic feet per day (mmcfd). It will have berthing and mooring facilities for LNG tankers with a capacity of 138,000-260,000 cubic metres, with the construction contract to be awarded on a build-own-operate-transfer basis for 15 years. Bangladesh inked a memorandum of understanding with Qatar in January 2011 to import 4 million mt/year of LNG from Qatar Petroleum. Bangladesh extended the MOU with Qatar until June 2015. They have not yet signed a final import deal.