6.

2
B angladesh
Project:
Strengthening of the Hydrocarbon Unit (HCU) Project
Country facts:
Cooperating institution: Official Name:
Hydrocarbon Unit (HCU) under People’s Republic of
Energy and Mineral Resources Division (EMRD) Bangladesh
Ministry of Power, Energy and Mineral Resources (MOEMR).
Capital:
Goals and objectives: Dhaka
The Hydrocarbon Unit (HCU) was set up by the Government of Bangladesh
in 1997 under the administrative control of the Ministry of Power, Energy and Chief of state:
Mineral Resources. The objective of establishing the HCU was to split the President Iajuddin Ahmed
responsibilities for commercial and regulatory governmental functions. Both
functions have previously been the responsibility of the national oil company Head of Government:
Petrobangla. Actual work on the project started in 1999. Prime Minister Khaleda Zia

The development objective of the project is to address the need for MOEMR to Population:
assume new responsibilities as a result of the arrival of foreign companies for 147 365 352 (2006)
operations in the petroleum sector in Bangladesh under production sharing
contracts (PSC), and an increasing commercial role of the state owned Petroleum sector, key figures:
petroleum company, Petrobangla. Average oil production:
3.400 bbl/day (2005)
The Objective of the Project is: Annual gas production:
Strengthening of the HCU to become a full-fledged functioning, permanent 14.5 bill m3 (2005)
body in the ministry, authorised to:
• Implement Government policies and regulations for upstream activities Organisation of the
for the petroleum sector petroleum sector:
• Promote and supervise private sector activities in the petroleum sector. Ministry of Power, Energy
and Mineral Resources has a
Programme division named Energy and
The programme is concentrated around the following components: Mineral Resources Division
• Establish an institutional Model (EMRD) which HCU is
• Establish a revised legal framework reporting to.
• Supervision of license activities
• Resource policy and management Bangladesh Oil, Gas &
• Resource assessment Mineral Corporation
• Training and other institutional support activities (Petrobangla) consists of
several companies of which
three are engaged in explora-
Contact: tion and production. Some
NPD: Mr. Jan Bygdevoll, Project Coordinator, international oil companies
jan.bygdevoll@npd.no (IOC’s) have operations in
Bangladesh. This is organised
by production sharing
contracts with Petrobangla

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6.2

Status of the project: stages until end of June 2005.

Phase I-1:
Build up period for definition and forming of the
HCU including employment and basic training of key
personnel.
Phase I-2:
Implementation phase, where regulatory, planning
and monitoring functions are put to work. Initially the
duration of the project was 4,5 years, but due to slow
progress it was decided to prolong the project in two
This also included some extra funding.
Plans for an extended project (Phase II) are being
prepared in cooperation with Asian Development
Bank (ADB) as a part of ABD’s programme for further
development of infrastructure for gas in Bangladesh.
This process has been delayed and there has been
little activity from the NPD side in 2006. It seems likely
that the activity will resume in 2007. It is at the mo-
ment unclear which role the NPD will play in the next
phase of the project.

Source: PetroView

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