State-owned Petrobangla has received a dozen expressions of interest for what it hopes will be Bangladesh’s first onshore liquefied natural gas import terminal, writes Amanda Battersby.

Those with their eye on the prize include South Korea’s Kogas, Mitsui of Japan, India’s Petronet LNG and a consortium led by Summit Group, which recently started operations at a floating storage and regasification unit in Bangladesh.

Summit’s partners vying for the onshore receiving terminal are Japan’s Mitsubishi and Jera, according to Reuters. Another Japanese player, Osaka Gas, was understood to have been interested earlier but it is not known whether it too submitted an expression of interest.

Petrobangla subsidiary Rupantarita Prakritik Gas Company (RPGCL) early this year approached the market for prospective players to build a 7.5 million tonnes per annum receiving and regasification facility at Matarbari in the Cox’s Bazar district in the south of the country.

On offer will be a contract covering the design, engineering, procurement, construction and commissioning of an LNG terminal on a build, own, operate, transfer (BOOT) basis.

The facility will need a minimum regas capacity of 1 billion cubic feet per day of gas

The winning contractor will also be tasked with initial survey and study work if required, and will also be responsible for all the related marine facilities and gas pipeline connection.

However, Petrobangla company GTCL will take charge of the financing for, and construction of, a new 90-kilometre pipeline to deliver regasified volumes to the national grid.

Expressions of interest for this contract were initially due back on 20 March but the

deadline was extended by three months as companies sought more time to submit their applications.

RPGCL earlier said it intends to issue bid documents to short-listed contractors by 29 August but that timeline now seems untenable.

The Bangladesh government had hoped work on the import terminal could start in December this year and be completed by June 2023 but this schedule might now also slip.

According to the expression of interest notice, the terminal will need to be able to handle LNG carriers of between 138,000 and 260,000 cubic metres.

RPGCL also stipulated that the facility’s capacity could be doubled to 15 million tpa in the future.

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