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Cabinet to approve 3 PSCs tomorrow

By Sharier Khan
The Cabinet at a meeting tomorrow will clear three Production Sharing Contracts (PSCs) for oil and gas exploration in the country under the Second Round Block Bidding, sources said.
It was intended till Saturday that the two PSCs initialled earlier, one with Pangaea for Block 8 and the other with the Tullow-Chevron-Texaco joint venture for Block 9. would be cleared by the Cabinet on Sunday (yesterday).
As last minute negotiations with Unocal on Block 7 took a "positive turn", another PSC was initialled. It will be sent to the Cabinet along with the two PSCs initialled earlier.
After Cabinet approval, the three PSCs will be sent to the Law Ministry and National Board of Revenue for their clearance on "priority basis".
The PSCs are likely to be signed during the visit of US President Bill Clinton.
Meanwhile Malaysian national oil company Petronas
which remained out of the Second Round Block Bidding negotiations has expressed its interest to sign a PSC.
Sources said, representatives of Petronas arrived in the city yesterday and they told Pet'robangla that the company was Interested In signing a PSC for Block 11 only.
Earlier. Petronas showed lack of interest when the government at first offered it to strike a partnership with Tul-low in blocks 9 and 11. The gov-ernment finally offered Petronas and Its partner Mobil to negotiate for Block 1 1 only.
Petrobangla Saturday initialled a PSC with Unocal for Block 7 on terms totally different from those in the two other PSCs. As per its PSC. Unocal would own the block for five years. If the company sees gas marketing and export prospects during this period, it will start its work programme.
If It sees no scope for expansion of gas market and pennission for export. Unocal will not undertake any work programme and the PSC will be automatically terminated after five years.
"This PSC is Just a showpiece," observed a source. “The government is trying to show some achievement to the US government by signing three PSCs. We would soon start to worry whether these PSCs would be at all beneficial for Bangladesh or not ."
The Second Round Block Bidding negotiations started in October 1997 amid much enthusiasm of foreign oil companies. But government's clear-cut favour to financially weak Tullow for awarding It the most coveted blocks 9 and 1 1 led to delay in the negotiation process.