The drilling of the oil well 7 of Kailashtila Gas Field under the Sylhet Gas Fields Ltd (SGFL) is likely to start in the first week of August, the authorities concerned have said.
“The scheduled drilling of the well has been delayed for 10 months since Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina laid the project’s foundation stone last year. It happened as the rig that will be used could not be transported from the Fenchuganj project,” said Md Haronur Rashid Mullah, project director at the well and general manager of the SGFL.
He told the Dhaka Tribune yesterday that state-owned Bapex had been tasked with drilling the well and producing oil at Kailashtila.
Malaysian consultancy firm Oriax is assisting the Bapex in the project because the latter does not have any experience in producing oil.
“We hope to start the drilling by the first week of August. Hopefully, we will then be able to start production in December this year,” he said.
About 500 barrels of oil are expected to be extracted from the well every day. The premier inaugurated the Tk220 crore project at Kailashtila in September last year, with work at the site estimated to begin in December last year.
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 Kailashtila and Haripur after conducting 3D seismic surveys at the sites.
The surveys estimated 109m barrels of oil reserve at 4,000-metre depth in Kailashtilla and 28m barrels at 2,600-metre in Haripur.
However, according to Petrobangla’s estimation, only 55m barrels or 7.5m tonnes can be extracted from the two fields. The Kailashtila and Haripur gas fields are currently under the supervision of the SGFL.
