Photo: Collected

DHAKA, April 25, 2026 (BSS) – An oil tanker carrying 100,000 tonnes of crude oil from Saudi Arabia is expected to reach the outer anchorage of Chattogram Port on May 5 night as it by now crossed the Red Sea, officials said.

“The MT Ninemia is carrying the crude oil and it already crossed the Red Sea. We expect the ship to reach the outer anchorage Chattogram Port on the night of May 5,” state-run Eastern Refinery Plc’s managing director Md Sharif Hasnat told BSS.

He said the ship manoeuvred its way through the Yemen’s Houthi-controlled coastlines and bypassed the war zone of the Strait of Hormuz and reached to safe areas in the Arabian Sea on its way to Bay of Bengal.

Hasnat said the ship departed from Yanbu port in Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea coast at 6 am on April 21, after it was loaded overnight.

The Eastern Refinery Limited (ERL) will resume its operation with the arrival of the shipment from Saudi Arabia as it was now forced to temporarily halt operations for want of crude oil.

But the ERL chief said another ship-Nordics Pollux- carrying 100,000 tonnes of crude oil remained stuck at the Ras Tanura port in Saudi Arabia’s eastern region due to virtual closure of the Hormuz Strait.

The state-run entity annually refines 1.5 million tonnes of crude fuel which account for the country’s roughly 20 percent of the country’s annual demand for 7.2 million tonnes.

Bangladesh Petroleum Corporation (BPC) officials said they import 92 percent of the petroleum to meet the demand while the remaining eight percent is available from local sources and processed from condensates.

The transportation sector is the top consumer of petroleum taking away 63.41 percent of the fuel followed by agriculture sector which requires 15.41 percent, mostly for irrigation.

Of the remaining volume 11.67 percent petroleum is used for power generation, 5.96 percent for production in industries and nearly 1 percent for household requirements.

Diesel tops the list in terms of petroleum demand followed by furnace oil, petrol, octane, kerosene and jet fuel that is used in aviation sector. 

BPC officials said during the last 2024-2025 fiscal they sold 68,35,341 tonnes of fuel.