Overview of natural gas condensate scenario in Bangladesh

Abstract

Bangladesh Oil Gas and Minerals Corporation short named Petrobangla operates oil and gas exploration, development, transmission, distribution and conversion together with development and marketing of minerals in Bangladesh. Bangladesh gas sector started its journey in the 60s, but its rapid expansion and integration started to accelerate in the early 70s spurred by the rising of the oil prices. Till now, 24 gas fields have discovered. Total recoverable proven and probable gas reserve is about 26.84 TCF and recoverable reserve is 20.70 TCF. Up to June 2013 about 11.2 TCF gas has been produced, leaving only 9.5 TCF recoverable proved gas. On the other hand, up to June 2013 about 30.27 MMBBL condensate has been produced so far. Eastern Refinery Limited (ERL) plays a vital role in supplying around 40% of the country’s current petroleum products demand. ERL processes crude oil imported by BPC and delivers the finished petroleum products to the other subsidiaries of BPC for marketing and distribution. ERL also processes natural gas condensate as crude mix. Besides ERL, Petrobangla companies like SGFL and BGFCL are fractionating condensate into different products like motor spirit (MS), kerosene, diesel and octane. And also some private entrepreneurs are fractionating condensate into different products like MS, kerosene, diesel, SBPS and MTT. So, these fractionation plants producing different products and marketed by Bangladesh Petroleum Corporation (BPC) are playing a big role reducing import to meet the national demand of Bangladesh. SGFL installed a fractionation plant to fractionate condensate into MS, Kerosene at Haripur in 1960. At present there are twelve fractionation plants are in production a total capacity of 11,000 BBL/Day in Bangladesh. These fractionation plants both by government and private organization are contributing in the national economy reducing imports of finished petroleum products.