M Azizur Rahman

International Oil Companies (IOCs) are showing growing interests to take part in the country's forthcoming offshore bidding for hydrocarbon exploration in the Bay of Bengal, a senior Petrobangla official said Wednesday.

Several globally reputed oil and gas exploration firms have already talked to the state-owned Petrobangla and inquired about the pros and cons of the bidding, Petrobangla Director for production sharing contract (PSC) Muhammad Imaduddin told the FE.

He said Brazil's Petrobras, Norway's Statoil, Singapore's Kris Energy and Indian Oil and Natural Gas Corporation Ltd (ONGC) are among the global firms which held talks with Petrobangla showing interest to take part in the offshore bidding.

Australian Santos, the operator of the country's sole producing offshore Sangu-11 well, US-based ConocoPhillips, the winner of two gas blocks in the previous 2008 offshore bidding, the China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) and Chinese Sinopec are also eyeing to take part in the next offshore bidding, sources said.

Petrobangla has planned to launch the offshore bidding this month offering 12 offshore gas blocks - nine in shallow water and three in deep water.

This will be the country's fourth bidding. Earlier, biddings were held in 2008, 2001 and 1997.

Petrobangla will also offer two shallow water gas fields -- Kutubdia and Teknaf -- under a "special package" for exploration by international oil companies in this round.

These two fields will be tagged with two of the 12 blocks and the companies to be awarded the licence will have to explore the fields along with the blocks.

As part of the special package for the fields, licence holders will have to give state-owned Petrobangla an additional 5 per cent of 'profit-gas' to be produced, on top of Petrobangla's regular profit-sharing structure.

Bangladesh finalised the proposed PSC allowing a 72.41 per cent hike in the sales price of gas produced from the blocks on offer.