Sources said the hefty loss incurred by Bangladesh Petroleum Exploration and Production Company Ltd (Bapex), the state-owned company in charge of the project, was caused by a lack of proper planning and internal mismanagement.
Speaking to the Dhaka Tribune yesterday, a Bapex official said the company conducted two drilling stem tests in the exploration well at the Mubarakpur structure in Pabna this month and found the gas flow pressure to be around 10 PSIG (pound per square-inch gas) on the surface level, which is far lower than the 4,500-4,700 PSIG required for extraction.
The standard gas flow pressure at exploratory gas wells in Bangladesh is usually around 4,500-4,700 PSIG.
“Since the gas flow pressure is not viable, the well has to be declared abandoned. We are waiting for the official confirmation,” the official added, requesting anonymity.
The project, titled Mubarakpur Oil-Gas Exploration Well Drilling Project, has been riddled with problems since its inception.
Mubarakpur was identified as a prospective gas exploration site after a five-year joint seismic survey conducted by Petrobangla and German company Prakla Seismos in 1984.
However, the project was not initiated until 2006; the Executive Committee of the National Economic Council (Ecnec) approved it on February 22, 2006 with a budget of Tk56.04 crore.
Even then, the project did not take off after being approved and was later revised and the budget was increased to Tk89.26 crore, which Ecnec approved on March 30, 2010.
The project deadline was first set for June 2014 but the drilling did not begin until August 22, 2014.
This was the longest delay that any Bapex project has ever faced.
The deadline was later extended to June 2015 but the project could not meet that either due to several technical problems.
The first major problem that the project faced was in December 2014 when the drilling rig got stuck at approximately 4,200 metres due to a pipe casing problem, said another Bapex official.
“We needed to dig a sidetrack well to continue the drilling, but it took several months to obtain the government approval for that well and for the added cost,” he added.
In February last year, Bapex resumed the drilling work and found an eight-metre gas layer at a depth of 4,400 metres.
The company continued drilling but was forced to suspend it at 4,500-metre depth as it did not have adequate equipment to manage the high pressure of gas – around 10,500 PSIG – at that level.
Later, they discovered that what they had thought to be gas at 4,500 metres was actually groundwater.
In addition, the drilling was suspended for nearly 15 months due to different glitches and bureaucratic tangles. Initially aiming to drill up to 4,700 metres under the surface, Bapex drilled 4,629 metres but were forced to stop.
Mubarakpur well is the first and only exploratory gas well in the northern region, the Bapex official said.
“This is the only site which we found to have high prospects in terms of gas exploration. But we found that the gas flow pressure is not adequate here. Now we believe gas exploration is unlikely in this region,” he added.
Speaking to the Dhaka Tribune, Badrul Imam, energy expert and professor at the geology department of Dhaka University, said it was unfortunate that the project had failed.
“Sometimes, some gas exploratory wells do not have enough gas flow pressure for production,” he said.
“Bapex should be free of bureaucratic tangles when implementing its projects for oil and gas exploration. The delays happened because Bapex had to explain the obstacles it faced during drilling to the Planning Commission in order to get the additional funds, which took several months.”
Bapex has failed projects at Srikail in Comilla, Kapasia in Gazipur and Sunetra structure in Sunamganj-Netrakona, where it did not find gas in the exploratory wells.
It currently supplies 104 million cubic feet of gas to the national grid every day from seven gas fields in Saldanadi, Fenchuganj, Shahbazpur, Semutung, Sundalpur, Srikail and Begumganj.
Md Nowshad Islam, managing director of Bapex, could not be reached for a comment when the Dhaka Tribune contacted him.
Thursday, March 20, 2025
