Experts For Exploring Domestic Hydrocarbon Resources To Address Energy Crisis

Experts have urged the authorities concerned to intensify hydrocarbon exploration in the local sources to reduce overdependency on imported fuel and address the country's energy crisis.

- 

"There is no alternative to explore and extract more gas from local resources for reducing fuel import," Khondkar Saleque Sufi, an international energy expert based in Queensland, told a webinar.

Bangladesh has long been facing a severe shortage of primary energy, especially natural gas, and increasingly becoming dependent on imports, putting extensive pressure on the foreign exchange reserves.

Mr. Sufi, former director of the Gas Transmission Company Limited (GTCL), highlighted the crisis and showed the possible way out measures at an EP Special Webinar titled "Enhancing Gas Supplies: Exploration & Development of Domestic Sources", recently organized by Energy & Power magazine.

He presented a keynote paper with a focus on the importance of exploration of local gas fields to face the situation.

Former Directors of Petrobangla Engr.

Md Md Quamruzzaman and Engr. Ali Iqbal Nurullah, former Managing Director at Bangladesh Petroleum Exploration and Production Company (BAPEX) Geologist Murtaza Ahmed Faruk Chisti, and former Vice-President of Ocean Energy M Fariduddin were the distinguished panelists of the webinar, hosted by Energy & Power Editor Mollah Amzad Hossain.

In his keynote presentation, Mr. Sufi identified a lack of proper planning, the poor vision of policymakers, and the failures of bureaucrat-dependent Petrobangla as the reasons for the failure of offshore exploration.

Sufi further mentioned that the BAPEXonly policy for onshore exploration for almost two strengthening decades and not the state-owned enterprise properly with competent manpower and adequate resources have led to successes that are considered to be well below the desired level.