State Minister for Power, Energy and Mineral Resources Nasrul Hamid yesterday said the price of furnace oil would be reduced within a week.
“The government has decided to decrease the price of furnace oil used in power plants and industries. The proposed price will be revealed within a week after verification,” he told reporters at the Secretariat.
Nasrul said no decision to reduce the price of petrol, diesel, octane and other fuels had yet been made.
“The government has made a good decision,” Prof Dr Badrul Imam, who teaches geology at Dhaka University, told the Dhaka Tribune yesterday in his reaction to the price reduction decision.
“If the price of furnace oil is reduced, the government does not need to increase the price of electricity as per the proposal of the electricity distribution companies,” he said.
State-run Bangladesh Petroleum Corporation (BPC) imports furnace oil from 13 international companies.
At present, the BPC imports around 1.2 million tonnes of crude oil and 4.2 million tonnes of refined oil while around 300,000 tonnes of petroleum products are received from different gas fields and private fractionation plants.
Crude oil is processed only in Eastern Refinery limited to produce diesel, petrol, octane, furnace oil and liquefied petroleum gas.
The BPC adjusted oil prices upwards in 2013 when the rate of commodity prices per barrel rose to $122 in the international market. It fixed octane price at Tk99 per litre, petrol at Tk96, diesel at Tk68 and furnace oil at Tk60 at the time.
The state-owned enterprise has been maintaining the same prices although oil prices dropped to less than $40 a barrel globally over the last two years.
A BPC official said the government makes Tk27, Tk26, Tk34 and Tk37 on an average by selling one litre of diesel and furnace oil, kerosene and jet fuel, petrol and Octane respectively.
The last time the price of oil was lowered was in 2008.