Govt to buy one lakh tonnes of diesel, two cargoes of LNG

The government has approved a proposal to import one lakh metric tonnes of diesel and two cargoes of LNG from the spot market to address the country's urgent energy needs amid the unstable geopolitical situation triggered by the Iran war.

The two purchase proposals were approved in an emergency meeting of the Cabinet Committee on Government Procurement, held via the Zoom platform on Saturday, which was a public holiday.

The meeting was presided over by Finance and Planning Minister Amir Khosru Mahmud Chowdhury.

According to the Finance Ministry, the one lakh tonnes of diesel will be procured through the direct purchase method in international procurement and will be supplied by Kazakh Gas Processing Plant LLP at a price of $75.06 per barrel. The total cost of this consignment stands at $55,994,760, which is equivalent to Tk 689.2954 crore.

The Finance Ministry further stated that a policy decision has already been taken to import a total of five lakh tonnes of diesel from Kazakh Gas Processing Plant LLP. The procurement committee has now given approval for the purchase of the first one lakh tonnes from the company. In addition, two cargoes of LNG will be imported from Aramco Trading Singapore Pte Ltd.

The proposal for purchasing fuel oil had received in-principle approval earlier in the meeting of the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs. Although two other proposals for importing fuel oil were also given in-principle approval in that meeting, the Energy and Mineral Resources Division later withdrew both of them during the procurement committee meeting.

One of the withdrawn proposals involved the import of one million tonnes of diesel (EN590-10 ppm level) and one lakh metric tonnes of gasoline 95 unleaded (octane) from DBS Trading House FZCO. The other proposal was for importing 100,000 tonnes of diesel (with 50 ppm sulfur) from Maxwell International SPC.

Earlier, on March 31, the Cabinet Committee on Government Procurement had approved another proposal to import a total of 260,000 tonnes of fuel oil.