India mulls laying gas pipeline from Odisha to Bangladesh

Odisha Sun Times Bureau
Bhubaneswar, Feb 6:

Eyeing the Bangladesh market in a big way for exporting petroleum products, Indian Government is actively considering laying gas pipeline from Odisha’s Dhamra to Bangladesh in order to export LNG to that country.

As per information provided by Petroleum and Natural Gas Minister Dharmendra Pradhan in Bhubaneswar today, preliminary discussion over the 200-km-long gas pipeline has already started. Odisha is the obvious choice as the LNG terminal is being set up here.

The minister also said that Chennai and Paradip ports of India would be interconnected with Chittagong and Mongla ports of Bangladesh for export of the petroleum products.

They can also be exported to Bangladesh from Paradip oil refinery scheduled to be inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi tomorrow. In this regard, he expressed keenness of India in setting up of marketing infrastructure in Bangladesh.

Further, India would also export diesel from Assam-based Numaligarh refinery to Bangladesh.

“India will export diesel from Assam-based Numaligarh Refinery in Assam to Parbatipur in north Bangladesh. First we will export diesel by train on experimental basis before connecting through pipelines,” said Pradhan after discussions on bilateral cooperation in the energy sector with Energy Adviser to the Bangladesh Prime Minister Tawfiq-e-Elahi Chowdhury today.

Informing that Bangladesh has allocated two oil blocks for oil exploration, he said there had been discussions on carrying out a preliminary survey soon and initiate drilling in the blocks after the rainy season.

He also informed that the officials of oil corporations had recently visited Bangladesh to discuss various energy sector projects of mutual interest to both nations.

Chowdhury said both the countries discussed to fix a timeline over oil exportation from Numaligarh refinery and other emerging issues including laying gas pipeline from Dhamra in Odisha. (With inputs from IANS)