Summary :

The government approved a proposal to buy another 33.60 lakh MMBtus of LNG from the spot market on 21^st of April, 2021. This is the sixth time the government would buy the fuel from the spot market.  Vitol Asia Pte of Singapore will supply the fuel. Each MMBtu (Metric Million British thermal units) will cost USD8.012.The cabinet committee on purchase yesterday approved the proposal submitted by Petro Bangla, a corporation of the energy and mineral resources division, to make the purchase at BDT 267.57 core. With this, the government has so far approved the purchase of a total of 270.10 lakh MMBtus of LNG from the spot market from three firms.

Content :

In September last year the government went to the spot market for the first time to meet the growing demand for the liquefied natural gas (LNG). At that time Singapore company Vitol won the order to supply 3,490,200 MMBtus for 132.93 crores.  After that this year in February, the government approved two more proposals from Vitol for 67.2 lakh MMBtus of LNG for the cost of Tk 623 crore. On March 10,  the government approved one more proposal from Vitol which cost $7.44 each MMbtu.

On March 10, the government approved one more proposal from AOT Trading AG from Switzerland which cost $8.345 per MMBtu. Whereas, on April 7, each MMBtu was priced at $7.28 and purchased total 33.60 lakh MMbtus for Tk 243.30 crore.

On March 24, a lower-cost fuel proposal at $6.53 each MMBtu was approved to the  US firm Excelerate Energy LP, which cost total of TK 218.07 crore for 33.6 lakh MMBtus of LNG.  

Meanwhile, Qatar Petroleum has signed a long-term deal with Vitol to supply 1.25 million tones of LNG to Bangladesh per year.

Bangladesh has two floating storage and regasification units (FSRUs) – Excelerate Energy and Summit LNG Terminal Co, each of both have the unit of the capacity to regasify 500 million cubic feet of LNG daily.

Source : The Daily Star