Dhaka – Cabinet Economic Affairs Committee on Wednesday gave its approval to two proposals ‘in principle’, – an LNG terminal to be set up by local Summit Group, and import of LNG from RasGas of Qatar on government-to-government agreement basis. UNB news agency reported
The Cabinet body at a meeting considering only these two proposals, with Finance Minister AMA Muhith in the chair, gave the nod to the proposals placed by the Energy Division.
As per the proposal, Summit Group will set up the LNG terminal with floating storage and re-gasification unit at Moheshkhali Island in Cox’s Bazar district, on build-own-operate and transfer (BOOT) basis. After 15 years of operation Summit will transfer the plant to the government.
Earlier, Summit Group signed an initial contract with Petrobangla on January 3 for the project. Under the proposal, Summit LNG Terminal Company, a unit of Summit Group, will develop the floating facilities within 18 months of signing the final contract.
The LNG terminal company will supply 500 million cubic feet of gas per day, for which the government will pay a total of $1.56 billion a year.
The terminal will cost Summit $500 million.
State-run Petrobangla will pay $158,511 per day to Summit as fixed component fees, $30,500 daily as operating component fees and $30,500 for port service component fees.
Summit LNG Terminal Co will pay $20 million as performance bond to Petrobangla within 15 days of signing the agreement, according to the proposal.
In July, state-owned Petrobangla and US-based Excelerate Energy signed the final deals to set up Bangladesh’s first LNG terminal. The terminal to be set up in Moheshkhali will handle imported LNG and supply it to the national grid from early 2018.
The Cabinet committee approved the proposal for import of LNG from RasGas of Qatar to re-gasify the liquid natural gas in the Moheshkhali Terminal.
The government had earlier signed a number of initial agreements with some companies to set up land-based LNG terminal as part of its move to meet the daily 500 mmcfd shortage it has been facing in supplying gas to industries.
The Cabinet Purchase Committee held a separate meeting to approve 7 other proposals.
Those include extension of Aggreko’s 95 MW Ashuganj power plant’s power purchase agreement for another six months at a tariff of Tk 9.04 per unit, and change of location of 54.363 MW HFO-fired private power plant to Patia of Chittagong from Satkhira.
The committee approved a proposal for import of 25,000 metric tons of fertilizer from Saudi Arabia’s state-owned MA’ADEN company by the Bangladesh Agricultural Development Corporation (BADC) at a price of $326.25 per metric ton.
Tender proposal for awarding contract of some 8 kms of approach roads for the Third Karnophuli Bridge received the nod of the committee. Mir Aktar Hossain and its JV partner WMCG won the contract at Tk 270.11 crore.
The same company also won the contract for construction of a 9-storied hospital building at Gopalganj at Tk 160.109 crore.
The committee also approved tender proposal to award contract to National Development Engineer for construction of 5-storied hospital building at Manikganj at a cost of Tk 175.19 crore.
