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BPDB to sign PPA with Indian Reliance on Sunday


Published : 30 Aug 2019 09:09 PM | Updated : 07 Sep 2020 11:49 AM

To cope with the increasing power demand, the Bangladesh Power Development Board (BPDB) is going to sign a power purchase agreement (PPA) with the Indian energy giant Reliance Power on Sunday to purchase power from the proposed 750MW power plant. Officials said here that the scheduled date for signing the deal was August 28, 2019.

Sources said the Reliance Power will supply electricity at Tk 5.84 per unit as the company is expected to complete the project in 36 months. The deal includes power purchase agreement (PPA), Gas Sales Agreement (GSA), Implementation Agreement (IA) and Land Lease Agreement (LLA). The government will have to spend a total of Tk 80,945 crore over the 22-year period for buying electricity from the plant, the officials said.

BPDB officials said the Reliance Power has changed its proposal four times and finally agreed to set up a 750MW gas-fired power plant at Meghnaghat near Narayanganj instead of 3,000 MW plant. The government has given a nod to supply gas to run the power plant. The plant was supposed to be run on 110 million cubic feet per day of regasification LNG arranged by Reliance. For that reason, the Indian company was supposed to build a 3.75 million tonne per year-capacity FSRU-based LNG terminal near the port city of Chattogram. Now Petrobangla will supply the gas.

Power Division officials said the Reliance Power signed the MoU during Indian Prime Minister Norendra Modi's Dhaka visit in early June 2015, announcing its plan to set up a 3000MW gas-fired power plant and a 500 mmcfd LNG terminal in Bangladesh. It was said that Relinace will install a FSRU near Moheshkhali, the state-owned Gas Transmission Company Ltd (GTCL) will install a gas pipeline from Moheshkhali to Bakhrabad and supply into the national grid as the Meghnaghat area is an industrial hub where gas crisis is a regular phenomenon.

The import of liquefied natural gas (LNG), use of the required gas at the power plant and also selling of the remaining portion of the imported gas to Bangladesh government were all parts of the Reliance's initial plan. The government has scrapped talks with the Reliance Power Ltd to build a new floating, storage, regasification unit (FSRU) for LNG imports at Kutubdia Island also.

Indian power giant Reliance Power Ltd has proposed to install another 1500 megawatts (MW) LNG-based power plant in Chattogram. The company has sent their proposal to the Power Division. An official of the Power Division said they are reviewing the proposal from the Reliance Group. The Reliance Power Ltd has around 6000MW of power generation capacity in operation and 10,000 MW under various stages of development.

Earlier, the government on March 14 signed five separate contracts with the Summit Corporation Limited and the GE Consortium for constructing a Combined Cycle Power Plant at Meghnaghat, Narayanganj having a 583 MW power generation capacity. The Summit Corporation Limited and the GE Consortium, a USA company, will jointly implement the power plant project to be completed within March 2022.