FHM Humayan Kabir

The country's petroleum exploration firm BAPEX would start drilling at prospective Mobarakpur gas structure in northern Bangladesh in the second quarter of next year to confirm gas reserve and viability of its extraction, officials said Monday.

The Bangladesh Petroleum Exploration and Production Company Ltd. (BAPEX) officials said they had already determined a point for drilling a well in a zone of Mobarakpur structure as the company was hopeful of a reserve of 200 billion cubic feet (bcf) of gas.

"We'll drill an 4.50-kilometre depth exploratory well at the prospective structure in May. The drilling will confirm the actual reserve and its production viability," Mosharraf Hossain, general manager of BAPEX, told the FE.

"The project needs some additional funds and time. We have recently placed the proposal before the Planning Commission for getting the extra time and fund for the drilling scheme," he said.

BAPEX, a company under the Bangladesh's energy corporation Petrobangla, will start drilling investing Tk 973.7 million through its new rig, to be imported from China, in the next year to determine the actual reserve at Mobarakpur in Pabna.

If the gas reserve is feasible, production from the first gas-store in the energy-hungry northern Bangladesh, will start from early 2011, Mr Hossain said.

The fund-starved BAPEX has already signed a deal last year with a Chinese company that would supply the exploration rig at a cost of nearly two billion taka.

The country's lone petroleum exploration company has completed two-dimensional (2D) survey at 161 line kilometre areas in Mobarakpur last year investing nearly Tk 500 million.

From the survey, the state-owned energy firm has found some 200bcf of gas reserve in the first zone of the Mobarakpur field, which they said, is quite satisfactory, the BAPEX officials said.

The officials said there is another untouched zone at the gas field where they would go for exploration in the next phase after the successful upcoming drilling there.

The official said if there is a feasible hydrocarbon reserve for production it will be the first petroleum presence in the northern region where gas supply is very inadequate that holds back the industrial growth there.

At present the government supplies limited gas to some areas in Sirajganj, Pabna and Bogra districts out of the 16 northern districts.