Jalalabad Gasfield likely to go into production in a week

SYLHET, Jan 25: The Jalalabad Gasfield is expected to go into full-fledged production within five days.

The gasfield in the suburb of Sylhet town, after several changes, was scheduled to start production from mid-January.

Preston Howard, Field Manager of the Occidental here told The Daily Star this afternoon that, "we are expecting to start production from January 29 or 30."

The delay is mainly due to further checking of all machinery and equipment including the 15 kilometre-long supply line to ensure adequate safety measures, he said. The Eid holiday was also one of the reasons for the delay, he added.

The company officials and technicians from home and abroad are now busy testing the pipeline. The 'hydro test' of the 14-inch pipeline is at its final stage, they said.

The 15 kilometre pipeline connecting the gas processing plant at Alurtal and the Kailashtila point in Golapganj thana has already been installed to supply dry gas to the National Grid.

"We have got the official 'clearance' regarding the gas processing plant from the Department of Explosives, said Howard. But, the department would issue another clearance for the rest of installations including the pipeline after a thorough checking, he said.

As per the existing legal provisions, the Department of Explosive has to issue clearance certificate after a thorough testing of all the instruments and equipment including pipeline of all the wells in and around the gasfield.

Sources informed that, Petrobangla would not allow Occidental to start production unless it (Petrobangla) gets the appraisal report of the gasfield. It will take few days more to prepare the report, they added. But, when asked, Howard could not say anything about it.

The Jalalabad Gasfield will be the first success story for the US company Occidental in Bangladesh since it signed two PSCs on January 11, 1995 covering the greater Sylhet region, except a very small area given to the Sylhet Gasfield Limited.

The Occidental had already completed drilling of three new wells while work over and development of another well had also been done by the company in the Jalalabad structure which falls in the Block 13. All these are ready for production. Test production in the wells began November 19 last year and continued for weeks with a view to testing the ability of the wells.

The approximate reserve in the four wells of the gasfield is one trillion cubic feet, company officials say.

If everything goes well, the company will initially start producing from two wells about 50 million cubic feet gas per day (mmcfd) for the National Grid. It will rise to 100 mmcfd when the rest two goes into production within the next 4 to 5 weeks, sources said.

The Occidental is also taking preparations for drilling another well-'Jalalabad 5' - in the same gasfield within a shortest possible time, company source informed.

The 'Jalalabad 1' well was first discovered and drilled by the Canadian company 'Scimitar' in the year 1988, but it was plugged subsequently in the face of mass agitation. The company had to leave Bangladesh that time. After signing of the PSC in 1995, Occidental got the right to explore oil and gas in the greater Sylhet region. The UNOCAL is its partner for operations in the region while German company 'Deutag' is the drilling subcontractor.