Crude, refined oil import falls by 20pc in Q1

State-owned Bangladesh Petroleum Corporation (BPC) imported around 1.2 million tonnes of crude and refined oil during the first quarter of fiscal year (FY) 2013-14, down by 20 per cent from the same period of the previous FY, a senior BPC official said.

The import cost also dropped by 25.69 per cent to US$821.81 million during the July-September period of this year from $1.10 billion of the same period of the previous fiscal, he said quoting statistics from the country's central bank.

The closure of the country's lone crude oil refinery, the Eastern Refinery Ltd (ERL) and suspension of several oil-fired power plants under cost-cutting measure led to the fall in petroleum consumption, he said.

The BPC did not import 100,000 tonnes of crude oil for refining in its subsidiary ERL during the August-September period as it was on 40-day routine overhauling, said the BPC official.


The ERL has a capacity to refine crude oil of around 1.4 million tonnes per year.

Frequent 'hartals' (general strikes) also caused significant fall in petroleum product consumption, said the BPC official. During hartals, motor vehicles usually refrain from plying on roads, businesses become bearish and shoppers down their shutters.

Diesel consumption across the country declines almost by 75 per cent to around 3,000 tonnes per day during the hartal days compared to the usual consumption of around 12,000 tonnes per day during non-hartal days, the BPC official figured out.

Hartals do not impact much the consumption pattern of other petroleum products like furnace oil, kerosene, octane, petrol, and aviation fuel, he added.

Hundreds of thousands of motor vehicles are run by diesel in the country, most of which do not consume fuel on hartal days, said the BPC official.

The BPC, however, estimated that it would need to import 5.40 million tonnes of crude and refined oil products in 2014 calendar year, up 1.88 per cent from the estimated import quantity of the previous 2013 calendar year.

In terms of cost of importing these products, the BPC estimated that it would require $5 billion for 2014, which is similar to the import cost of 2013.

The BPC currently has term deals to import refined oil products from the Kuwait Petroleum Corp., the Petco, the trading arm of Malaysia's Petronas, the Philippine National Oil Company, the Emirates National Oil Company, Egypt's Middle East Oil Refinery, the Maldives National Oil Company, the PetroChina and Indonesia's Bumi Siak Pusako.

The corporation has also deals to import crude oil from the Saudi Aramco and the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company.