BPC oil imports to rise due to power plant requirements

State-owned Bangladesh Petroleum Corp. (BPC) will annually require US$1 billion in additional fund to import gasoline to support the proposed liquid fuel-based rental power plants, officials said. At present, BPC has to spend about US$2 billion annually to import about 3 million tons of petroleum. The government recently approved a number of private sector “rented” power plants with a total capacity of 1,200 megawatts to tackle the country’s nagging power crisis. As state petroleum agency, BPC will import the fuel to meet the requirement of the rental plants which are tentatively scheduled to go into operation in March-April next year. (June 1, 2010)