19 firms submit bids for ERL Unit-2 consultancy

CHATTOGRAM, July 20: A total of 19 requests for expression of interest (REOI) for the appointment of a consultant for the second unit of Eastern Refinery Limited (ERL) were submitted on Monday, the deadline for submission.

According to the state-owned Bangladesh Petroleum Corporation (BPC), the REOI was invited to select an international consulting firm to serve as Project Management Consultant (PMC) for the engineering, procurement and construction (EPC) works of the Modernisation and Expansion of Eastern Refinery Limited project.

The tender box was opened immediately after the submission deadline.

BPC officials said the government had made progress in fast-tracking the long-delayed ERL Unit-2 project and hoped to appoint the consultant by the end of the year.

The government first took up the project in 2010 and approved Tk13,000 crore in 2013, but it remained stalled. Subsequent attempts to implement the project, including a proposal by S Alam Group in 2024, also failed to materialise.

The project was later revived with revised financing, and the Executive Committee of the National Economic Council (ECNEC) conditionally approved it in December 2025 after reducing the project cost to Tk31,000 crore.

Meanwhile, the government has approved a $1.004 billion loan from the Islamic Development Bank (IsDB) to help finance the project.

Once completed, the new refinery unit will increase ERL's refining capacity from 1.5 million tonnes to 4.5 million tonnes annually, enabling the production of Euro-5 standard fuels and significantly reducing Bangladesh's dependence on imported refined petroleum.

The project is scheduled to run from January 2025 to June 2030, with trial operations expected to begin in early 2029.

Currently, Bangladesh consumes about 7.2 million tonnes of fuel annually. ERL refines around 1.5 million tonnes of crude oil each year, meeting about 20 per cent of the country's fuel demand, while the remainder is met through imports of refined petroleum products.