Bangladesh awards Dighipara coal field to Petrobangla

Wednesday, 27 Jun 2007

It was recently reported that Bangladesh government has decided to award the state owned Petro bangla an exploration license for Dighipara coalfield in Dinajpur snubbing a number of proposals from some foreign companies. Bangladesh government has decided to award the license to Petrobangla as according to the mining rules and the state-run organization should always get preference for exploration and development of a coalfield.

As per report the Petrobangla recently applied to the Bureau of Mineral Development for the license to explore the field in which the Bangladesh Geological Survey has already detected a deposit of about 150 million tonnes of high quality coal.

All the three organizations Petrobangla, the BMD that issues licenses and oversees mining activities and the GSB that explores mineral resources are under Bangladesh’s Energy and Mineral Resources Division.

However, the report cites a source in Petrobangla as saying that they were not aware of the government’s decision to give them the license. They said that “If they get the license they might look for strategic partners or contractors for exploration and development of the field. So far around 150 million tonnes of coal has been explored, but the existing reserve is not viable enough for commercial extraction. So we need to explore further to find out more coal.”