Firms short-listed for building country's first LNG power plant

Express (July 11, 2011)

The government has short-listed eight local and foreign firms and sought proposals from them to build the country's first LNG-fired power plant, a top government official said Sunday.

The firms include -- Sumitomo Corporation of Japan, Management & Finance AS of Norway, GMR Infrastructure Pte Ltd and BW Gas Ltd of Singapore, MDC Industry Holding Company LLC of UAE and local firms Unination Energy Ltd, IEL Consortium & Associates and Bengal Power Ltd.

State-owned Bangladesh Power Development Board (BPDB) has already issued request for proposal (RfP) documents to the short-listed firms and asked them to submit proposals by July 31 next.

"We have been flexible to short list as many as eight firms for submitting proposals to build the LNG-fired power plant, which is new in the country" BPDB Chairman ASM Alamgir Kabir told the FE Sunday.

He said selection of the sponsor to build the power plant will be done after scrutinising proposals from the bidders.

BPDB had floated tender in December, 2010 seeking expression of interest (EoI) from the interested firms to build a minimum 200-mw capacity LNG-based power plant on build-own-and-operate (BOO) basis.

A total of 14 firms had shown initial interest to build the liquefied natural gas (LNG)-fired power plant.

Kabir said the firms have the liberty to offer higher-capacity LNG-based power plant, if they are interested to do so.

The plant will be built at a suitable place to be selected by the sponsor in the port city Chittagong under the government's Private Sector Power Generation Policy.

The plant can be floating or land-based depending on the feasibility of the sponsor, Kabir said.

The plant would be an integrated one and the bid-winning sponsor would have to import LNG, arrange LNG vessel including construction of LNG terminal and re-gasification plant and perform other necessary works to install, operate and maintain LNG-based power plant and sell the generated electricity to the BPDB.

Evacuation of power will be done by state-owned Power Grid Company of Bangladesh.

State-owned Petrobangla is now scrutinising 10 bids placed by global firms to build an LNG import terminal having the capacity to handle 5.0 million tonnes per annum.