2 years gone, but fuel transmission facilities are yet to take off

Though Petroleum Transmission Company (PTC)- PLC (public limited company) was formed about two years ago as new subsidiary of the Bangladesh Petroleum Corporation (BPC) to take over the operations and maintenance (ONM) responsibility of the fuel transmission facilities across the country, the new entity has to wait some more years to start the job.

According to official sources, since the inception of the new entity, some 62 officials and employees were either recruited or deputed from other entities, but they are still not very capable to do a special technical category job, for which they have not enough experience.

Admitting the issue, managing director of the PTC-PLC Md. Yousuf Hussain Bhuiyan said his organisation needs some more time to achieve the necessary capabilities to handle the petroleum fuel transmission activities. 
"These are highly technical jobs which need experiences, expertise, technological knowledge to do operation and maintenance of fuel transmission facilities which we lag in this regard", he told UNB.

He, also a general manager of the BPC, however, said the PTC-PLC is gradually trying to build up its capacity to overcome its bottlenecks.

According to annual report 2023-24 of the BPC, the PTC- PLC was formed on August 4 in 2022 through an order of Energy and Mineral Resource Division giving the new entity the responsibility of operations, maintenance, security, safety and co-ordination of BPCs pipelines to be set up across the country.

The new PTC-PLC was approved with a capital worth Tk 1000 crore and a paid-up capital of Tk 100 crore to get registered under Joint Capital Company and Firms Registration (RJSC) Authority.

As per the governments decision, the PTC-PLC will take over the new facilities including (a) Single Point Mooring (SPM) with double pipeline; (b) India-Bangladesh Friendship Pipeline Project, (c) Jet A-1 Pipeline from Pitalganj (Near Kanchanbridge) to Kurmitola Aviation Depot (KAD) including Pumping Facilities Project; (d) and Petroleum oil transportation project through pipeline from Chattogram to Dhaka.

 The PTC-PLC will transmit the imported refined and crude oil and produced through the pipelines to be constructed under these four development projects to the depots, main installations and refineries in a cost effective way.

But among the projects only the India-Bangladesh Friendship Pipeline Project has been operational since last year while the remaining others projects are under implementation.

  According to official sources who wished anonymity, the SPM project is at the last stage of completion and expected to be handed over to BPC by June this year.

"But the government has been negotiating with the Chinese EPC contractor to engage it to do the operations and maintenance job of the project due to capacity limitations of the PTC -PLC", said a top official of the SPM project who also requested not to be named.

He said initially the Chinese contractor China Petroleum Pipeline Engineering Co. Ltd (CPPEC) will operate for a few years and then hand it over to the PTC - PLC through BPC.     —UNB