As part of the Hydrocarbon Vision 2030 for the north-eastern region, India would lay the pipeline connecting Sitwe in Myanmar, Chittagong in Bangladesh, and most north-eastern states and West Bengal in India, SC Soni, executive director of India’s state-run oil company ONGC, told reporters in Agartala on Saturday.
Talking to reporters in West Bengal on Sunday, Indian Petroleum and Natural Gas Minister Dharmendra Pradhan said his country’s Petroleum and Natural Gas Regulatory Board started the process of laying the pipeline from Contai in West Bengal via Haldia to Duttapulia on the India-Bangladesh border for supplying gas.
“We have discussed with our Bangladesh friends and have agreed to take the pipeline to Bangladesh. There are also talks to bring the pipeline back to India through Siliguri,” he said, according to a report of The Statesman newspaper.
Energy cooperation between Dhaka and New Delhi reached a new level in recent years. Bangladesh now imports 600 megawatt of electricity from its neighbour, with discussions to bring in more are underway.
In March, India sent its first shipment of diesel to Bangladesh through rail route.
Pradhan said, “We have started supplying diesel… there are plans to supply natural gas as well.”
The two countries have plans to install a 135-kilometre cross-border pipeline to help Bangladesh import 10 lakh tonnes of diesel from India a year.
Pradhan said he had a very fruitful discussion on energy cooperation with Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina during his Bangladesh visit in April.
Thirteen routes with a total length of about 6,900 km of pipelines have been proposed for the purpose, reported The Economic Times.
Soni said the first high-level meeting was held in Guwahati last week to finalise the laying of the pipeline to carry gas, LPG and diesel. The second one is scheduled in Agartala later this year.
Currently, large quantities of gas are burned in India’s north-eastern region because those cannot be piped to consumers, he added.
In April last year, Numaligarh Refinery Ltd of India and Bangladesh Petroleum Corporation (BPC) agreed to form a joint venture to set up a Indo-Bangla Friendship Pipeline from NRL’s Siliguri marketing terminal in West Bengal to BPC’s Parbatipur petroleum product storage depot.
The BPC and Indian Oil Corporation also signed an agreement in April this year to jointly set up a liquefied petroleum gas terminal plant in Chittagong city which will help pipe gas to India’s north-eastern states.
The plan to establish a gas pipeline between Bangladesh and India was first spelled out during Indian PM Narendra Modi’s visit to Bangladesh in June last year.
Pradhan said Bangladesh State Minister for Energy Nasrul Hamid would visit India before the Bangladesh premier tours the country later this year.
“Together we will create the ground for more energy cooperation so that the prime ministers of both India and Bangladesh can ink more deals,” added Pradhan.
Hamid said India’s move to lay the pipeline was a new development in energy cooperation between the two countries. He, however, didn’t give any details.
Bangladesh has been facing gas crunch for long. Amid dwindling gas reserves, the government has not given new gas connections, particularly to households, in the last six years. But demands for new connections are growing in different parts of the country.
Bangladesh now produces 2,750 million cubic feet of gas per day, with a shortage of more than 500mmcfd, according to Petrobangla.
At the current pace of consumption, the country’s 13.22 trillion cubic feet of proven and probable gas reserves would last till 2030.
On the other hand, Myanmar has about 10 trillion cubic feet of proven gas reserves. The country exports gas to Thailand and China, according to the Myanmar Times.
India holds at least 91 trillion cubic feet of recoverable gas reserves. On top of conventional gas reserves, India holds an estimated 63 trillion cubic feet of recoverable shale gas, according to an estimate by Quartz, a New York-based business news outlet.
