DHAKA, Jan 14, 2025 (BSS) – Bangladesh Petroleum Corporation (BPC) has planned to procure 1.30 lakh tonnes of diesel from India to particularly to cater the fuel needs in the northwestern part of the country, officials said here today.

“We have planned import diesel from India's Numaligarh Refinery Limited (NRL) at an estimated cost of Tk. 1,137 crore under a g to g (Government to Government) agreement,” BPC chairman M Amin Ul Ahsan told BSS.

He said the procurement proposal by now received economic affairs committee approval and now awaited final approval from the Committee of the Advisers Council on Government Purchase.

Ahsan said BPC Board of Directors meeting on Sunday last proposed the diesel import between January and December 2025 suggesting the volume of the liquid fuel be transported through 131.57-kilometre cross-border India-Bangladesh Friendship Pipeline (IBFP).

“The imported diesel will be supplied to the northern part of the country,” he said.

The chairman of the state-run entity said under a 15-year deal with India, the BPC gained 5.5 percent import premium while Bangladesh could have got the fuel with lesser premium if it was imported from some other countries.

But, he said, the proposed import from India would lessen the import cost because of the direct pipeline while otherwise the transport cost would have enhanced the procurement cost if the diesel was imported in cargo through the Chattogram or Mongla ports.

According to the contract, the 131.57-kilometre stretch, just 5 kilometres of the pipeline is in India and of the rests, 82 kilometres are in Panchagarh, 35 kilometres in Dinajpur and the remaining parts are in the Nilphamari and Rangpur.

BPC officials said the whole consignment of the fuel would come through the cross-border pipeline from India's Numaligarh refinery, located in Golaghat in its north-eastern Assam state.

Bangladesh will receive the diesel at Parbatipur petroleum fuel depot in northwestern Dinajpur for distribution in specific destinations.

The friendship pipeline was constructed as part Bangladesh-India energy cooperation to especially to import diesel from India. Diesel is the highest volume of petroleum which Bangladesh imports from abroad.

Every year Bangladesh imports about 5.4 million tonnes of crude and refined petroleum products.

The BPC's demand for refined fuel oil is around 7.4 million tonnes, of which 4.6 million tonnes is diesel and 80 percent of the diesel is imported.

BPC is the lone state-owned fuel oil importer while it usually imports diesel from seven countries under G to G method, which is the 50 percent of the imported petroleum. The rests are procured under international tenders.

The officials said domestic refineries are capable to supply 20 percent of fuel oil and the remaining 80 percent was imported.