BPC to lay submarine pipeline for unloading oil

State-owned Bangladesh Petroleum Corp. (BPC) will soon start laying a 65 kilometer (41 mile) submarine pipeline across the Bay of Bengal to cut time for unloading crude and refined oil from tankers, officials said. BPC, the sole importer and distributor of crude and petroleum products in the country, now uses smaller vessels to unload the cargo from oil tankers. “The discharging process is cumbersome and also costly adding additional operational cost of some US$5,000 a day for each import tanker,” said an official at BPC. BPC imports up to 29 million barrels of petroleum products a year, including 9 million barrels of crude oil, to meet the country’s demand, mainly from Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, India and the United Arab Emirates. (October 13, 2009)