The New Nation - Internet Edition

BUSINESS REPORT

Bangladesh Oil, Gas and Mineral Corporation, also known as Petrobangla, will conduct extensive seismic surveys in five large gas fields over the next three years to try to find more reserves, a senior official said yesterday.

The three-dimensional (3D) surveys, funded by a loan of nearly $22 million from the Asian Development Bank, will take three years to complete in all of the five fields, said Jalal Ahmed, chairman of Petrobangla.

The surveys will kick off at Bakhrabad gas field, 100 kilometres (62 miles) southeast of the capital Dhaka, by February next year, he said.

Petrobangla operates the Titas, Bakhrabad, Habiganj, Rashidpur and Kailashtila gas fields, all discovered during the 1960s, but it has yet to conduct extensive surveys to confirm the exact size of the reserves, Jalal said.

Energy officials said initial recoverable reserves estimated in these fields were 11.42 trillion cubic feet (tcf) but about 7.70 tcf may have been depleted after years of consumption.

"But we are confident that the reserves in these fields may rise considerably after the seismic survey," Jalal said.

The fields produce 820 million cubic feet (mmcf) of gas daily, nearly half of the total 1780 mmcf of gas the country produces each day.

Results from a series of seismic surveys conducted recently in the country by U.S. oil firm Chevron and French oil company.

Total SA have encouraged Petrobangla to conduct similar surveys, energy ministry officials said, without giving details.

Jalal said the country would require additional reserves of 24 tcf of gas until 2025 in order to maintain the present level of more than 6 percent annual economic growth