After a seven-year delay, state-owned Bangladesh Petroleum Exploration and Production Company (Bapex) yesterday began exploratory drilling at a gas structure in Mobarakpur, Pabna, that it hopes will increase supply by 14%.
It is expected to add 15 million cubic feet of gas a day (mmcfd) to the national grid.
A Bapex official said the company had never experienced such a long delay in initiating a project in its history. The project was approved to start in January 2006 but actual work on the site began yesterday.
Petrobangla Chairman Hossain Monsur inaugurated the well drilling work. Bapex Managing Director MA Baki, Project Director Ataur Rahman and other officials were present at the programme.
“We have started an exploration well at Mobarakpur. A funding and rig crisis caused delays to begin work on the well,” the Bapex managing director told the Dhaka Tribune yesterday.
“Mobarakpur has a lot of potential. We began digging work with the Bijoy 12 rig which has a vertical drilling capacity of over 4,000 metres. We plan to go as deep as 4,700 metres below the surface,” he said.
“We hope that we will be able to complete drilling within three months,” he added.
Baki said the work at the well location, situated at Mobarakpur under Santhia upazila of Pabna, began in 2010 after Bapex acquired 8.8 acres of land for the project.
The Mubarakpur Oil/Gas Exploration Well Drilling project was approved by the Executive Committee of the National Economic Council (Ecnec) on February 22, 2006, with a budget of Tk56.04cr.
Later, a revised development project proposal was approved by Ecnec on March 30, 2010 increasing the budget to Tk89.26cr.
The project implementation period was initially extended to June 2014. But was further extended for another year. Mubarakpur was identified as a prospective site after a five-year joint seismic survey conducted by Petrobangla and German company Prakla Seismos was completed in 1984.
Bapex currently supplies 105 million cubic feet of gas to the national grid every day from six gas fields in Saldanadi, Fenchuganj, Shahbazpur, Semutung, Sundalpur and Srikail.
