The Hindu Business Line : Diesel shipments to Bangladesh from Numaligarh begins

Snapshot
The supply agreement will expire on December 31; renewal necessary for further shipments.
More vessels would be needed to achieve10,000-tonne per month target.

Bangladeshi oil carrier barges carrying high speed diesel through the Brahmaputra River from Numaligarh Refinery Ltd halting at Pandu Port for customs clearance in Guwahati on Thursday. - Ritu Raj Konwar

Santanu Sanyal

Kolkata, Dec. 20 The long-awaited shipment of diesel by barges from Numaligarh Refinery in Assam to Bangladesh has started.

The first consignment of 1,200 tonne, loaded in two barges of 600-tonne capacity each, left Silghat, the refinery’s nearest loading point on the Brahamaputra river, last week and arrived at Guwahati for Customs and other clearances.

Two other barges, one of 1,200-tonne capacity and the other 600-tonne, are currently being loaded at Silghat. They too will leave for Bangladesh shortly. With this, a total of 3,000 tonne are to be exported to Bangladesh in the current year.

The four barges deployed for the purpose have been supplied by a Mumbai-based river transport company.

According to agreement with Bangladesh, Numaligarh refinery is to supply 10,000 tonne of diesel every month. However, the agreement expires on December 31, 2007. Which means, the agreement has to be renewed before further shipments can take place.

According to the agreement, the shipments were to take place between May and December 2007. But that did not happen. The first shipment is now taking place. Declaring Silghat as the loading port under the India-Bangladesh protocol took time.

“Discussion with the Bangladesh authorities concerned is in progress at the appropriate level for the renewal of the agreement,” according to a spokesman for Numaligarh Refinery. “Bangladesh is keen to continue importing diesel from Numaligarh.”

The spokesman estimated that a few more vessels would be needed if the targeted throughput of 10,000 tonne a month was to be achieved. The average turnaround time being 14 days, the existing vessels can handle at the most 3,000 tonne a month.

“From the refinery side we’ve no problem in supplying 10,000 tonne a month provided there are barges to transport it,” he said.

Asked if more vessels were being chartered, the spokesman replied that the chartering of the vessels was being done from Mumbai by the Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd, the major shareholder of Numaligarh Refinery Ltd.

“But then having more vessels will serve no purpose till the agreement governing the shipment between the two countries is renewed,” he added.

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