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Unocal asked to develop Moulvibazar gas field

Petrobangla's move to cope with increasing domestic demand

SHARIER KHAN
Petrobangla has asked Unocal to develop the Moulvibazar gas field, discovered in 1999, to deal with an impending gas crisis in the country.
The US oil company, which has been pressuring Bangladesh to allow gas export to India on the ground that the local gas market was saturated, is yet to respond to the proposal.
Petrobangla projects that a minimum of 35 million cubic feet per day (mmcfd) gas will be required from the Moulvibazar field in 2004 and 60mmcfd in 2005 to stay even with the domestic demand. By 2007, it would need gas from Unocal's
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Bibiyana field.
The country's demand for gas has already exceeded the projected quantity, by over 100mmcfd. Against a projected demand of 1,127mmcfd in 2003, gas consumption has already shot up to 1240mmcfd during peak hours, clogging up the existing gas pipeline capacities.
During this summer, when power consumption will increase by another few hundred megawatts, the demand for gas will also go up.
Discovered in 1999, the Moulvibazar field bears the legacy of the Magurchhara fire. The Magurchhara field, which is also known as Moulvibazar 1, blew out during its drilling, owing to inept operation on the part of Unocal's predecessor, Occidental, on June 14, 1997.
Since discovery, Unocal conducted all scientific studies of the field and assessed that the field had about 350 billion cubic feet (bcf) gas, a quantum indicating that it is a small gas field.
However, Unocal refrained from making an official announcement as that would have contractually compelled it to submit a development plan.
Instead, the company went on hammering the gas export issue.
However, energy experts opposed it saying that Bangladeshi gas reserves were too small to support the idea of export, which requires a commitment of at least seven trillion cubic feet of gas.
A couple of experts from the chemical engineering department of BUET and the state minister for energy supported gas export, saying that Bangladesh had enough gas to make the move.
They argued that Petrobangla was giving 'fabricated and unusually high' gas demand projections. Besides, they said, allowing export would give the oil companies adequate incentive to invest more in the 'stagnant gas market' of Bangladesh.
The majority of the members of a national-level Gas Utilisation Committee opted for meeting domestic demand first, saying that the existing gas reserves could not even cope with the ever- increasing demand.
A seven per cent demand growth rate projection of the committee has already proven too conservative, as the real demand has exceeded that projection.
Even if such conservative projection is taken into account, Bangladesh needs 98mmcfd gas from the Bibiyana gas field in 2007, and 122mmcfd in 2008, 249mmcfd
in 2010 and 500mmcfd in 2012.
Unocal wants to export 500mmcfd gas to Delhi by investing one billion dollars in pipelines in India alone. Even if this project is approved now, the company cannot begin export before 2008, one year after the country's need for Bibiyana gas will arise.
State Minister Mosharraf Hossain, an advocate of Unocal's agenda, recently told the BBC Bangladesh would need Bibiyana gas in 2007.
If the Moulvibazar gas field was developed, it would actually be Unocal's first complete field development.
It inherited the Jalalabad field from Occidental. Then Occidental was again given the Jalalabad field, which has 1.6tcf gas, for mysterious reasons.
The Jalalabad field was discovered by Scimitar but was sealed off as the contract with that company had expired. Typically, a discovered gas field is kept for Petrobangla as a 'ring fenced gas field'.
Two wells were drilled in Moulvibazar, one up to the depth of 3,510 metres with 30 metres of gasbearing sands. A delineation well encountered about 31 meters of gas-bearing sand.