Modi, Hasina inaugurate oil pipeline tomorrow

The much-awaited construction work of the 130 km Indo-Bangla Friendship Pipeline (IBFPL) to import fuel oil from India will begin on September 18.
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi will kick off the construction work of a Tk 520 crore pipeline project along with other two rail projects through a videoconference on the afternoon of September 18, according to the PMO.
For meeting the petroleum products demand of the Northern part of the country in 2015  state-owned BPC inked a MOU with Indian state-run oil refiner-marketer Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd, an Assam based refinery, Numaligarh Refinery Ltd (NRL) to import petroleum products.
Initially it will import      around 22,000 million metric tons of gasoline from India which will stands around 4 lakh metric tons over the next 15 years, according to the Energy Division.
"A 130 km Tk 520 crore Indo-Bangla Friendship Pipeline has been build to import the fuel from NRL's Marketing Terminal at Siliguri of West Bengal in India to Bangladesh Petroleum's Depot at Parbatipur off it 125 km pipeline is situated inside Bangladesh," a senior official said.
India has provided the money as grant, he added. The pipeline will run through a joint venture company formed by NRL and Bangladesh Petroleum.
"We want to start importing the cleaner gasoil earlier from mid-2018 to stay in advance over the mandatory provision of shifting the gasoil specifications to lower sulfur content," he said. Bangladesh's sole refinery is still producing 0.25 per cent sulfur gasoil.
According to the draft contract, India will float the tender to implement 125 km pipeline project between the two countries.
BPC officials claimed that this project will save Tk 180 crore per year.
BPC is set to roll out tighter gasoil specifications in January 2019, from the current 500 ppm sulfur gasoil grade under a directive from the Ministry of Environment and Forests.
Earlier, the government mandate was to switch to the ultra low sulfur diesel grade from 2019, according to the Energy Division.
Fuel used for 'off-road' functions (such as farm, construction, and forestry operations) is exempted from the ultra-low-sulfur requirements, at least for the present time. There is nothing wrong to legally use the low-sulfur fuel (500 ppm sulfur), but the problem is that not all fuel suppliers are carrying both the 'on-road' (15 ppm) and the 'off-road (500 ppm) diesel fuel.
Before 1993, the allowable sulfur level in diesel fuel was 5,000 parts per million (ppm). From 1993 until earlier this year, allowable sulfur was 500 ppm. However, the ultra-low-sulfur requirement was implemented in June 2006, which means that the sulfur content must be no higher than 15 ppm for 'on-road' transportation fuel. The government is requiring the use of the ultra-low-sulfur fuels to reduce the concentrations of sulfur compounds in the environment.