CFPs poor feat foils govt plan to shun import of octane, petrol

The government has failed to stop import of octane and petrol from abroad, although it has issued Condensate Fractionation Plant (CFP) licences to private companies for producing both the fuels in the country.
The aim of the government was to stop dependency on imported fuel and to save foreign currency.
Bangladesh Petroleum Corporation (BPC) official said the country could attain self-sufficiency in octane by enhancing the annual production of Rashidpur Condensate Fractionation Plant (RCFP) to 120,000 tonnes by 2015.
Although, the state-run BPC had implement the project but it is still importing octane and petrol from abroad, the official added.
The government expects to stop importing 95-octane gasoline by 2016, saving US$200 million annually but the poor performance of the CFPs has overturned the plan. The country has to spend $5 billion to purchase 5.6 million tonnes of petroleum every year.
"We have already allowed 13 private companies to refine around 200,000 tonnes of octane and petrol from condensate (by-product) collected from different gas fields," a senior official of BPC told the Daily Observer on Saturday.
The country is producing around 550,000 metric tons of condensate per day from 24 gas fields, according to Petrobangla.
The country's demand for petrol and octane, however, has remained stagnant at less than 350,000 tonnes per annum due to the widespread use of Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) in private cars, pickup vans, buses and auto-rickshaws in the big cities.
"As the production of condensate was increasing from 2013 the government has already started land acquisition to start expansion of the third phase of the RCFP and allowed private sector in the country to do business and at the same time plans to stop importing octane and petrol," the official said.
In the last one and half years we found that some of the CFPs are violating the condition not to sell their products to the petrol pumps directly, which had created a serious problem in energy business, he added.
"We stopped some CFPs from doing business and to clarify to us as to why they have failed to use properly the 550,000 metric tons of condensate the gas fields are producing every day," he added.
The country's annual production of condensate increased by over 70 per cent mainly after Chevron Bangladesh set up a liquid recovery unit at Bibiyana Gas Field in the later half of 2014.
In 2013-14 financial year, the state-owned and international oil companies extracted some 321,000 tonnes of condensate, and the quantity increased to 360,000 tonnes the following fiscal year.  The Energy Division estimated the extraction of condensate would rise to 560,000 tonnes in the on-going fiscal year 2016-17.
The condensate produced at various gas fields in the country is usually purchased by a number of private and public fractionation plants, petrochemical companies and the BPC's subsidiary ERL, mainly for producing petrol and octane. The Government needs to go for strong monitoring of it and if anyone was found guilty should be punished, a BPC official observed.
The country currently imports about 90,000 tonnes of 95-octane gasoline annually. It buys refined oil products from several international oil companies including Malaysia's Petronas, PetroChina, Philippines National Oil Company (PNOC), Kuwait Petroleum Corporation (KPC), Emirates National Oil Company (ENOC), Egypt's Middle East Oil Refinery and Vietnam's Petrolimex.