The second unit of the Eastern Refinery Limited is likely to be set up by June 2016 with a capacity of refining around 3.5m tonnes of crude oil annually.
Bangladesh Petroleum Corporation (BPC) is negotiating with a Chinese state-owned firm Wuhun Engineering Company Ltd to implement the project.
The country’s lone refiner Eastern Refinery currently refines 1.3m tonnes of crude oil per year while the capacity is 1.5m tonnes. It is located in Chittagong.
But the existing one meets only 10% of the country’s demand. “We are negotiating with Wuhum to set up second unit of Eastern Refinery,” BPC chairman Md Eunusur Rahaman told the Dhaka Tribune.
The construction cost has been estimated at Tk76.2bn. “BPC saves Tk6-7 per litre by refining crude oil instead of importing refined oil,” said BPC chief.
A BPC official said the capacity of the proposed unit would be three times more than the existing one. He added that a 30-acre land near the Eastern Refinery has already been acquired for expansion of the refinery.
BPC annually imports about 5m tonnes of crude and refined oil at an average price of Tk500bn, according to official data.