Fuel imports from India thru pipeline starts 18 March

Bangladesh is set to start importing fuel oil from India through the cross-border India-Bangladesh Friendship Pipeline which is scheduled to be inaugurated on 18 March.

The Bangladesh Petroleum Corporation (BPC), the lone state-owned importer of fuel oil, plans to import around 2-3 lakh tonnes of fuel through the pipeline annually.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Bangladesh counterpart Sheikh Hasina will inaugurate the pipeline virtually on 18 March, said Foreign Minister AK Abdul Momen on Thursday.

The minister made the disclosure while briefing reporters about his recent visit to India.

A time-saving project

Currently, 16 northern districts get fuel supply from the oil depot in Parbatipur, which normally gets its supply through the Khulna-Baghabari rail line. Sometimes, oil is brought in by trains from India as well.

The BPC faces problems sending the fuel from Chattogram to Dinajpur through roads and railways, especially when natural calamities occur and political tensions rise. 

Sources at the BPC said it usually takes 48 hours to send oil tankers from Chattogram to the northern region through waterways. 

Rail routes take a shorter time than waterways, but the BPC cannot use the full capacity of the train carriages due to weaker railway tracks in the eastern region. 

To deliver the required amount of oil to the northern region, the BPC needs to carry it first from the Chattogram to Mongla port. From there it is carried to Parbatipur through a broad-gauge rail line.

The 131-km long oil pipeline, however, will carry fuel from Assam's Numaligarh Refinery Ltd (NRL) marketing terminal at Siliguri in West Bengal to Dinajpur's Parbatipur depot of BPC.

The direct cross-border pipeline will carry fuel oil to Parbatipur without any of the hassle currently experienced, said Md Tipu Sultan, general manager at Meghna Petroleum Ltd, a distribution wing of the BPC and the project implementing agency.

Direct oil pipeline to save cost

Sources at the BPC said that currently, it spends around $8 to import and supply each barrel of oil. 

The cost includes expenses of importing oil by ship from the Middle East to the outer anchorage of Chattogram port, and delivering it to Dinajpur from there.

The cost of importing oil through the cross-border pipeline will come down to $5.5 per barrel once the project is operational, said BPC officials. 

In the 2021-2022 fiscal year, BPC imported 66 lakh tonnes of fuel oil while the Bangladesh Independent Power Producers also imported around 42 lakh tonnes of furnace oil to generate electricity.