DOT Desk: The new government is making desperate attempts to explore fresh oil and natural gas in the country’s onshore blocks to maximise the country’s energy outputs, officials said, reports The Daily Star.
“We are reviewing the non-prospective wells and dropping those from the plan. Only prospective wells are being considered for drilling,” a top official of the energy and mineral resources division told the daily sun on Thursday.
He said the government has a target to drill 108 exploratory, development and work-over wells by 2021. “But now we are dropping most of the non-prospective wells,” he said.
At a meeting last Tuesday, exploratory well Hararganj-1 and two development wells—- Kasba-2 and Srikail North-2 were dropped from drilling plan, sources confirmed.
“We are now designing our drilling activities only based on the prospective wells under the Rupkalpa drilling project. The Srikail East-1 well has already been drilled and Salda North-1 will be drilled under the project in September 2019,” another official said.
He added the government is expected to produce an additional 120 billion cubic feet natural gas through the latest drilling project.
The ‘Rupkalpa-1’ project has been designed to implement by 2018. But, the project has been extended another two years till June 2020 as only one well out of targeted five was drilled in two years.
State-owned Bapex slowed down its drilling activities at Srikail structure under onshore block-9 despite International Oil Company Tullow Oil delivered huge output from south part of the gas field named as ‘Bangura’.
Besides, the government allowed drilling of 13 wells to three international oil companies —- Azerbaijan oil company SOCAR, Russian Gazprom and the CNPC.
SOCAR was assigned to drill three wells at Samutang south-1, Begumganj-4 and Madanganj-1 and Sariatpur-1 to explore natural gas. But the company is yet to identify the location, which slowed down the gas exploration activities.
Gazprom was assigned for drilling five wells including Srikail North-1, Mobarakpur South East-1, Sunetra-2, Srikail East-1 and Madan-1. But, the project is now being implemented by Bapex as Gazprom was reluctant in advancing the project. CNPC also did not work on any well.