Survey on hydrocarbon reserves in Bay begins this month 

Nearly three years into signing contract, a US-Norway joint venture is going to start the much-anticipated multi-client survey to acquire data on hydrocarbon reserves in Bangladesh's part of the Bay of Bengal.

Norwegian survey company TGS and US firm Schlumberger have announced that they will start the two-dimensional survey early this month. Final deliverables are anticipated in the first quarter next year, as per a press release issued on Tuesday. 

The data would then be used to invite international oil and gas companies, which would further explore the sea area before deciding on starting extraction works. An earlier effort to attract the companies failed due to lack of adequate data to work with.

The US-Norway joint venture was expected to start the multi-client survey in 2020 and deliver the outcomes by March this year. 

When contacted, Engineer Md Shaheenur Islam, director (Production Sharing Contract) at Petrobangla, told The Business Standard that due to the Covid-19 pandemic and war-related disruptions the contractor could not initiate the survey. 

After settling maritime boundary disputes with Myanmar in 2012 and with India in 2014, Bangladesh's total maritime area increased significantly, leading the government to capitalise on potential energy reserves. 

However, while Myanmar and India have already found gas in the Bay of Bengal, Bangladesh has not had any success. 

In March 2020, Petrobangla and the TGS-Schlumberger joint venture signed a contract to conduct multi-client two-dimensional seismic surveys in the bay. 

As per the contract, the joint venture will not get any payment from Bangladesh to conduct the survey work, which is expected to cost around $10 million, said sources at Petrobangla. 

The joint venture is entitled to earn revenues from selling data to interested international oil companies, but would have to share the seismic data and the profits with Bangladesh. 

In the press release, TGS said that the initial phase of the project will cover minimum 11,000 line kilometres and aims to provide consistent, high-resolution broadband seismic data on a regional scale to enhance the geological understanding of the prospective Bengal Fan. 

However, the overall project plans to encompass around 32,000 line kilometers of multi-client seismic data covering most of the country's offshore area, it added. 

Sources at the Energy Division said that Bangladesh could not conduct any multi-client seismic survey in its offshore areas, even as some IOCs did so in their respective blocks.

Energy experts, however, believe that there are heavy potentials of extracting hydrocarbon resources in Bangladesh's territorial seawaters, as both India and Myanmar have already discovered huge gas reserves in the Bay.