State-owned Petrobangla has taken an initiative to start the long-awaited multi-client survey to find hydrocarbon reserves in the Bangladesh part of the Bay of Bengal. It is expected that TGS-Schlumberger, a Norway-US joint venture (JV), will start the surveytowards the end of this year. The survey will help to know about hydrocarbon reserves like oil and gas possibility in offshore area, an official said.
The Norwegian seismic specialist TGS and oilfield service provider Schlumberger are currently involved in a multi-client seismic project in the Gulf of Mexico.
The JV firm is expected to survey 22 offshore hydrocarbon blocks within the sovereign territory of Bangladesh. The blocks cover 81,000-square kilometres having depth ranging from 20 metres to 2,500 metres in the Bay.
After completion of the survey, Petrobangla plans to provide interested international oil companies (IOCs) with the non-exclusive multi-client seismic data of the offshore blocks. The TGS-Schlumberger, however, would have to share the seismic data and profits with Petrobangla. It would take two years to do the survey and be free to trade the data for the next eight years.
Petrobangla has plans to launch a fresh offshore bidding round on completion of the survey in the Bay. A former senior official of Petrobangla said multi-client survey is very essential as it can give an idea on the prospects of oil-gas in the Bay of Bengal. On the basis of the report, foreign companies show interest in offshore exploration.
“To meet the domestic demand, Bangladesh is importing costly LNG from the international market. If the country finds large reserves in the Bay of Bengal, it can save a huge amount of money now needed to import them. Besides, the gas crisis will also be overcome,” energy experts said. In March 2012, and July 2014, following the historic victory at the UN Maritime Tribunal, Bangladesh got 11,631 square kilo metres and 19,467 square kilometres from Myanmar and India respectively. Offshore gas exploration can be a potential source of energy for Bangladesh. But since then, no exploration has literally been carried out to extract offshore gas resources.
With readjustment, the energy division has been divided into 26 blocks in the entire sea territory. However, work has begun in only 4 blocks.Sources said there are indications of vast reserves of oil and gas in Block D-12 in the deep sea, and Bangladesh could have a minimum of 5 prospective structures in the Bay of Bengal following the 2-D seismic survey of 1,580 sq km area.
Badrul Imam, professor of geology at Dhaka University said Bangladesh could still not start the survey in the sea due to lack of proper planning and vested interests. An artificial crisis has been created. Due to lack of new gas, the country is now importing LNG, which will cause additional pressure on the people.He said Bangladesh will have to come out of the control of slow working, and unauthorised interference in the management of its exploration work.
Bangabandhu had said that gas in the country’s land will finish today or tomorrow. There will be no problem. But before that oil and gas from the sea will have to be lifted. He had also taken a few initiatives in this regard. But after the assassination of Bangabandhu in 1975, the offshore oil-gas exploration work had stalled for a long time. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina repeatedly pushed for offshore oil and gas exploration, but due to bureaucratic complications, results are not yet satisfactory.
After settling the dispute with Bangladesh, India and Myanmar have started extracting huge quantities of gas in their parts of the Bay of Bengal. Myanmar is regularly exploring and drilling gas blocks. In 2016, Myanmar announced a gas production of 4 trillion cubic feet in Block Thalin-1. The gas lifting started from here.Currently, more than 10 foreign companies are working for exploration in 20 blocks in the sea of the Myanmar area.
On the other hand, India is expected to have reserves of about 50 trillion cubic feet of gas in the Krishna-Godavari Basin area of the Bay of Bengal.Petrobangla said, it can increase gas lifting until 2020. Then it will be stable in 2024-25. After then, production will decrease. According to Petrobangla, the demand will rise to 4,770 million cubic feet in 2024-25, whereas the production capacity will be 2,196 million cubic feet from the current gas fields in the country.
In next fiscal year the demand and production capacity will be 4,910 and 1,702 million cubic feet. In the same way demand and production ratio will be 5,200 and 1,054 million cubic feet in 2028-29. Gradually it will decrease, and if new gas fields are not discovered during this period, gas production will be zero in 2041.