China Petroleum in deal for oil pipeline
The government yesterday signed a deal with China Petroleum Pipeline Bureau to build a mooring with a 220km pipeline at an estimated cost of Tk 5,426 crore.
Zhao Yujian, president of China Petroleum Pipeline Bureau, and Sayed Mohammad Mozammel Haque, a director of Bangladesh Petroleum Corporation or BPC, signed the deal at a programme at Sonargaon Hotel in Dhaka.
Of the cost for the single-point mooring with a double pipeline, the government will provide Tk 1,021 crore and BPC will give Tk 111 crore. The rest Tk 4,293 crore will come from China Exim Bank as project financing.
The new infrastructure will have an annual unloading capacity of 90 lakh tonnes. It will unload 1.2 lakh tonnes of crude oil in 48 hours and 70,000 tonnes of diesel in 28 hours.
Under the project, a 146 kilometre offshore pipeline and a 74 kilometre onshore pipeline will be built to bring the imported oil from the deep sea to Eastern Refinery's plant in Chittagong for processing.
The meeting was supposed to finalise the details of the agreement on the construction of the container terminal.
But Roy yesterday said India has sought seven days to give its opinion on the issue.
A number of Indian companies have shown interest in investing in the seaport. India Ports Global, a joint venture between Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust and Kandla Port Trust, is one of them. Apart from all terminals and power stations, there will be an exclusive economic zone and an airport around the port -- all of which are expected to bring a new lease of life to the economically lagging south.
The authority says it wants to develop the port in three phases and make it fully operational by 2023.
The main port will be built on the west bank of the Rabnabad channel and will allow up to 250-metre vessels to come through once dredging of 35 kilometres of the channel is done. The Chittagong port that now handles more than 90 percent of the export-import trade of Bangladesh can handle 186-metre vessels.
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