BPC wants Chinese contractor to run SPM for at least one year

After spending 9 years the much-talked about "Installation of Single Point Mooring (SPM) with Double Line" project cost increased thrice, Bangladesh Petroleum Corporation (BPC) is now set to sign a special agreement with its Chinese contractor to operate the project at least one year as they are not ready to run the project independently.

The state owned BPC is now planning, to sign the deal with the China Petroleum Pipeline Engineering Co Ltd, currently building the countrys maiden SPM system as its contractor, to equip its manpower to run the project.

"As per contract, the company is set to handover the project to us (BPC) by June, 2024, however, we need their (company) support up to at least December 2024, our manpower are yet to be well equipped right at the moment to run the project," SPM Project Director (PD) Md Sharif Hasnat told the Daily Observer on Saturday.

Meanwhile, the government formed a new company called Petroleum Transmission Company (PTC)- PLC (public limited company), under the umbrella of BPC to take over the operations and maintenance (ONM) responsibility of the fuel transmission facilities across the country, unfortunately it is yet to be activated due to different cause, this project is also under this company, however, to know the situation of ground, the Energy Division Secretary Nurul Alam visited Chattogram last week.

Admitting the issue, managing director of the PTC-PLC Md. Yousuf Hussain Bhuiyan said his organisation needs some more time to achieve the necessary capabilities to handle the petroleum fuel transmission activities.

The new PTC-PLC was approved with a capital worth Tk 1000 crore and a paid-up capital of Tk 100 crore to get registered under Joint Capital Company and Firms Registration (RJSC) Authority two years back.

Meanwhile, to directly unload imported petroleum oil to the SPM, BPC already installed a 15-kilometre- long pipeline from land up to deep sea, which has the capacity of unloading 9 million tonnes every year. Alongside a 120-kilometre pipeline was also built from the SPM project to Eastern Refinery Limited (EFL) to treat the crude oil. Approximately 135 kilometres (km) of offshore pipeline and 58 km of onshore pipeline have already been installed.

"What the BPC had done in the last 9 years, is  that they had already revised the project three times, made a separate entity to look after the issue, that was also crawling, when they started the job whether they failed to understand the manpower issue," a senior official of the Energy Division has said.

The Energy Division has raised various questions, asking for an explanation from the BPC as to why it needed, what they did in the last 9 years even though implementation has reached 97 percent physical progress.

The project aims to facilitate the unloading of imported crude oil and finished products with improved safety at a low cost and within a short time. The project taken by the Ministry of Power, Energy and Mineral Resources in 2015 was initially scheduled for completion by December 2018.

Government has taken up the project as it takes 11 to 12 days by following offloading the imported fuel through lighterage ships, which is very time-consuming, expensive, and risky. If SPM was built no lighterage would be required to carry fuel from the mother vessel, which is now moored at the outer quay, after the implementation of the project.

"Now we heard that the Chinese contractor China Petroleum Pipeline Engineering Co. Ltd (CPPEC) will operate it for a few years and then hand it over to the PTC - PLC through BPC," official said.

CPPEC on behalf of the Bangladesh Petroleum Corporation (BPC), the implementing agency Eastern Refinery Limited (ERL), recently proposed to sign the separate deal that will also add new cost to the present cost of Tk 8,222 crore; however, it did not discuss when the country could really be able to get the real benefit from this high-cost project.

"This is very common in all mega projects in Bangladesh, it eats up a major portion of GDP every year. We need to investigate it and take immediate measures to stop the misuse of money and time as it should not be continuing," former Energy Adviser, energy expert Dr. M Tamim said.