Oil, gas exploration: Bangladesh announces ‘Offshore Bidding-2024’

Bangladesh has announced Offshore Bidding-2024 to accelerate oil and gas exploration.

A press conference organised by the Energy and Mineral Resources Division on “Oil and Natural Gas Exploration Under Bangladesh Offshore Bidding Round, 2024”, was held at Petrobangla Auditorium on Monday.

Prime minister’s advisor on power, energy and mineral resources, Tawfiq-e-Elahi Chowdhury was present at the press conference as the chief guest where state minister for power, energy and mineral resources Nasrul Hamid attended as the special guest.

In order to make ‘Offshore Model PSC, 2019’ updated and competitive in the global context, ‘Bangladesh Offshore Model PSC, 2023’ was formulated based on the opinion of international consultants and Petrobangla’s own review, which was approved by the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs on 26 July, 2023.

The new PSC includes several points that aim at creating exploration opportunities for international oil companies in Bangladesh’s offshore areas.

One of the points of the newly formulated PSC is to make the annual cost recovery maximum of 75 per cent for both deep and shallow sea areas, said the release.

As a result of this change, the contractor will get the invested money back promptly, and so Petrobangla will receive a higher rate of dividend.

Profit sharing method in the current PSC has been included by following Profitability Based (R-Factor).

In this method, the contractor’s invested money is guaranteed to be returned within a reasonable time, and the government has kept the opportunity to receive more dividends by keeping the upper limit and lower limit of the dividend share eligible for bidding, it said.

Brent has been used as the marker price for determining the price of shallow and deep sea gas, and it has linked gas prices to the international market.
These attractive points in the PSC are expected to catch the eyes of the international bidders and investors to explore the offshore energy sources.
The press conference was chaired by Petrobangla chairman Janendra Nath Sarkar and energy and mineral resources department secretary M Nurul Alam.