The country's only oil refinery, Eastern Refinery Limited (ERL) has achieved a new milestone in its 57-year history by refining more than 35,000 metric tonnes of oil in continuous production in the first half of the 2024-25 fiscal year.
This information was given in a press meets by company's Managing Director Engineer Md. Sharif Hossain on Tuesday morning.
He said that ERL started its operations in 1968 as a subsidiary of Bangladesh Petroleum Corporation (BPC) under the country's Ministry of Power, Energy and Mineral Resources.
This time, after the planned maintenance, the production unit was restarted, and the company was able to continue continuous production at maximum efficiency.
Experts say that this is a unique example not only in terms of production capacity, but also in terms of technology management and optimal use of resources. This achievement has been possible as a result of microplanning and efficient manpower management.
Second Unit Project: this success of the company, another important progress is that the Development Project Proposal (DPP) of Second Unit (ERL-2) project has been submitted to the Planning Ministry.
If this project, which has been discussed for more than a decade, is implemented, the country's refining capacity will increase to 4.5 million tons. Originally, the initial cost of the proposed project in 2013 was estimated at 13 thousand crore taka. However, over time, due to various technical and economic considerations, it has increased to about 36,410 crore taka.
The government and BPC are planning to seek international assistance for the implementation of this project.
According to ERL sources, discussions are underway with Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, China and international development cooperation agencies for loans and technology assistance. As a result, the capacity to produce environmentally friendly fuel of Euro-5 standard will be achieved in the future.
Considering the economic importance, the commissioning of the second unit will mainly reduce the country's refined fuel shortage to a large extent, reduce import dependence, and save an average of 237 million dollars in foreign exchange every year.
In addition, the new unit will be able to receive crude oil from Russia and other sources, which will increase the security of fuel supply manifold. Considering the overall situation, there are still some challenges for the company.
