State-owned Bangladesh Petroleum Corporation is now receiving bids from oil suppliers to import upto 1.52 million tonnes of diesel, jet fuel, furnace oil and octane during July-December period under open tendering.
The volume of petroleum product the BPC sought to import is around 43.39 per cent higher than it purchased in the same period a year earlier, a senior BPC official said.
The corporation will import significantly higher quantity of petroleum products during the next several months to use in oil-fired power plants due to the recent fall in natural gas production, said a senior official.
Some dual-fuel power plants that were running on natural gas will be running on diesel as a result, he said.
The petroleum products include 1.10 million tonnes-1.28 million tonnes of diesel, 100,000 tonnes jet fuel and 120,000-164,000 tonnes of furnace oil.
BPC intends to import the petroleum products under three groups, namely Group A, Group B and Group C on cost and freight (CFR) basis at Chittagong port.
Under Group A, the selected international oil supplier will have to supply 550,000-640,000 tonnes of diesel and 40,000 tonnes of jet fuel.
Under Group B category, the selected international oil supplier will provide 550,000-640,000 tonnes of diesel and 40,000 tonnes of jet fuel.
For group C, the selected supplier will provide around 120,000-140,000 tonnes of furnace oil.
To take part in the bidding, the bidder must own a crude oil refinery having the capacity of refining at least 5.0 million tonnes annually, the annual turnover of the bidder must be a minimum of US $3.0 billion in the past three years.
The interested bidder must have the experience of satisfactorily completing the annual export of at least 2.0 million tonnes of petroleum products in the past three years.
The oil suppliers will be able to submit bids either for any of the three or all the groups, he said.
The bid submission deadline is April 11 and the offer validity is for 75 days until June 24, 2018.
This is the corporation's fifth fourth tender to import refined petroleum products through open tendering since February 2016.
The BPC is currently importing up to 1.27 million tonnes of diesel, jet fuel and furnace oil for January to June, 2018 under tendering system from Unipec Singapore and Vitol Asia.
The corporation has been importing refined petroleum products under both term deals and open tendering in line with a government decision last year.
Kuwait Petroleum Corporation, or KPC, is the major term supplier of refined petroleum products in Bangladesh.
Other term suppliers of petroleum products to the BPC include Malaysia's Petco Trading Labuan Company, Emirates National Oil Company, PetroChina Singapore, Chinese Zhenhua Oil Company Ltd, Petrolimex Singapore of Vietnam, Philippine National Oil Corporation, Indonesia's Bumi Siak Pusako, and Oman Trading International.
