The government has decided to invite fresh bidding for 2D multi-client seismic survey for offshore hydrocarbon hunt.
Nasrul Hamid, state minister for power, energy and mineral resources, made the disclosure to journalists in a programme at the Dhaka Reporters’ Unity yesterday.
“After receiving some instructions from the Prime Minister’s Office, we are going to have a fresh bidding for 2D multi-client seismic survey,” Nasrul said in reply to questions during yesterday’s Meet the Reporters programme.
However, the government has yet to officially make it clear whether it is cancelling the previous bidding for which interested companies dropped proposals in March.
Sector insiders say that this might delay the exploration and extraction of oil and gas in the country’s offshore areas. They also said that lack of guidance of decision-makers in appointing a selected surveyor had slowed down the momentum of the government initiative.
The government received tender proposals in March this year, but has since failed to award the survey contract to any of the bidders.
In April, a government evaluation committee recommended that the Energy and Mineral Resources Division signed a deal with Norway-US joint venture company TGS-NOPEC and Schlumberger to conduct the survey.
US-based Geotrace came out second in that evaluation.
After evaluation, state-run oil company Petrobangla sent its offers to the Energy Division for the next step. Attaching its own review with the Petrobangla offers, the Energy Division forwarded the relevant files to the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO).
Sensing that they may lose the race, some bidders then allegedly tried to influence the process by lodging complaints with the PMO to disrupt a fair evaluation.
According to the Petrobangla plan, the successful contractor would get two years to complete the survey.
There are great potentials for finding hydrocarbons in Bangladesh’s maritime territory considering that both India and Myanmar have discovered remarkable gas reserves in the Bay of Bengal.