The scheduled drilling of the seventh oil well at the Kailashtila Gas Field in Sylhet has been once again delayed by three months because the rig – to be used for the work – could not be brought from the Fenchuganj project.
“We have not managed to start drilling here [Kailashtila] because the work at the fifth well in Fenchuganj is taking longer than it is supposed to. We were supposed to use the rig that is being used in Fenchuganj, for drilling well at Kailashtila,” MA Baki, managing director of Bapex, told the Dhaka Tribune.
Bapex, a subsidiary of state oil company Petrobangla, is tasked with drilling the well and producing oil at Kailashtila.
Malaysian consultancy firm Oriax is assisting Bapex in the project because the latter does not have any experience in producing oil.
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina inaugurated the Tk220 crore project at Kailashtila in September last year. At that time, December was fixed for beginning work.
“Now we hope to start the drilling by the end of June. Hopefully, then we will be able to start production in December [2014],” said Md Tofazzal Hossain, managing director of Sylhet Gas Fields Ltd (SGFL), another Petrobangla subsidiary.
In May 2012, more than two decades after the discovery of the first two oil fields in Bangladesh, Bapex found oil reserves of nearly 137 million barrels in Kailashtilla and Haripur after conducting 3D seismic surveys at the sites.
The surveys estimated 109 million barrels of oil reserve at 4,000-metre depth in Kailashtilla and 28 million barrels at 2,600-metre in Haripur.
However, according to Petrobangla estimates, only 55 million barrels or 7.5 million tonnes can be extracted from the two fields. The Kailashtilla and Haripur gas fields are currently under the supervision of the SGFL.
In 1986, Petrobangla’s exploration division discovered the Haripur oil field. It was leased to a foreign company named Scimitar, which managed to extract approximately 68,873 tonnes of oil from 1987 to 1994.
Kailashtilla, discovered in 1962, produces around 80 million cubic feet of gas every day from six wells.
