The New Nation - Internet Edition

UNB, Dhaka

Petrobangla is going to hold its planned international road-show here on March 30-31 instead of March 23-24, aiming to attract foreign oil companies to participate in the 3rd round hydrocarbon block bidding.

Official sources said the road-show was originally scheduled for March 23-24, but Petrobangla shifted the schedule responding to requests from the potential bidders due to Ester Saturday.

However, Petrobangla failed to secure permission of the Energy Ministry to hold another two planned international road-shows abroad.

The state-owned hydrocarbon agency had offered to hold one of the overseas road-shows in Singapore and another in either the USA or Canada.

But the Energy Ministry was found reluctant to give its go-ahead as it said that all the previous road-shows held during the 2nd round bidding failed to achieve the target.

Petrobangla invited international bidding on February 15 asking the international oil companies (IOCs) to submit their respective offers by May 7, 2008 for deep-sea oil and gas exploration.

Petrobangla officials said about 20 IOCs have shown keen interest to participate in the road-show to be held in Dhaka. "We've received an encouraging response from IOCs and they're contacting us to participate in the bidding," said a senior official.

The caretaker government approved a proposal and a new model Production Sharing Contract (PSC) in the first week of February.

The government has a plan to complete the bidding by September and award contracts to selected firms by August-October 2008 to utilize the next dry season for offshore exploration work.

Under the Model PSC, the country's maritime area has been divided into 28 blocks for the hydrocarbon exploration. Of the blocks, eight are located in shallow waters while the rest 20 blocks in deep-sea area.

For the shallow blocks, a total of 8 years' time will be given to the contractors and they will have to conduct exploration within 3 years as initial period. Then another 2 years will be given for extended exploration and another 2 years for second-time extension. For the deep-sea blocks in the Bay of Bengal, the contractors will get a total of 9 years to carry out exploration work. Of the time, 5 years will be given for initial exploration and then it will be extended in two phases.