Abandoned Sangu infrastructure: Eight years on, facilities still left to rust away

The platform and reservoir of Sangu, the country's maiden offshore natural gas field, have been remaining idle for over the past eight years despite having a potential for utilising the facilities as the gateway for importing LNG, said officials.

Inaction on the part of the government on its utilisation is also leaving the gas receiving and supplying facilities worth millions of dollars at risk of getting damaged permanently.

A number of international firms, however, had proposed to utilise the platform as a natural storage and a gateway to import liquefied natural gas (LNG) or compressed natural gas (CNG) to help mitigate the country's mounting energy crisis.

But the government is yet to take any decision over the use of Sangu reservoir and its platform either by any state-run entities or by private entrepreneurs.

Some international firms had proposed to use the abandoned Sangu gas field as a natural reservoir of LNG and the platform as a gateway to import LNG, re-gasify it and supply the re-gasified LNG through the Sangu facility, a senior Petrobangla official told the FE.

Some others have proposed to use the Sangu reservoir to reserve CNG after importing it through its platform, said the official.

"It is unfortunate that the government could not take any decision to utilise the almost ready-to-use facilities over the past years," energy expert professor M Tamim told the FE.

If the government could take a decision, he said, a huge quantity of LNG could be kept in the natural storage of Sangu for its use whenever necessary.

"Some 1.0 trillion cubic feet (Tcf) equivalent of LNG could be kept in the Sangu reservoir if it could be used properly," said Mr Tamim who was in charge of the energy ministry during the past caretaker government.

The government could purchase LNG from the international market when the price remains low for using it at a time when the prices go up, he justified.

The country's natural gas demand for a whole one year could be met with the stored LNG, he added.

In many countries in the world, including in the USA and Canada, the abandoned gas fields are used as natural storage of LNG, Mr Tamim justified.

Officials said Sangu facilities include a platform in the Bay of Bengal, subsea pipeline and onshore gas process plant, which is located at Fouzdarhat in Chattogram.

A 50-kilometre-long 20-inch diameter seabed pipeline was also built between the offshore platform and the onshore plant.

Sangu platform is located at calm sea near the planned Bay Terminal of Chattogram port at Salimpur, which is free from sea turmoil.

It has the advantage to be operational even during the peak monsoon season without any interruption, which the country's two operational floating, storage, re-gasification units (FSRUs) lack, said sources.

LNG re-gasification at the two FSRUs of Excelerate Energy and Summit Group at Moheshkhali island in the Bay of Bengal were disrupted several times before due to rough seas, they added.

Sources said, the energy and mineral resources division (EMRD) under the Ministry of Power, Energy and Mineral Resources (MPEMR) earlier had initiated a plan to build several small-scale FSRUs to regasify around 200 million cubic feet per day (mmcfd) of LNG by each of the FSRUs.

Some of them including Trafigura, Gunvor and Vitol Asia were in final talks with the state-run Petrobangla and its subsidiary, Rupantarita Prakritik Gas Company Ltd, to build the mini FSRUs.

But the plan was shelved in 2018 as the government focused more on building bigger-capacity FSRUs and subsequently built two units having the capacity to regasify around 500 mmcfd each.

To meet the mounting gas demand, the government now considers again allowing more private entrepreneurs to build more FSRUs, regasify imported LNG and supply it to the national gas grid, said a senior energy ministry official.

Sources said, Sangu gas field was discovered in 1996 in the Bay of Bengal, 50 kilometres off the land near Silimpur.

Australian oil and gas firm Santos was in charge of operations when the field was permanently shut on October 01, 2013.

Sources said Sangu started supplying gas in 1998 under the operatorship of Cairn Energy.

Initially, it produced around 50 mmcfd of gas, which increased up to 180 mmcfd.

Production levels dropped to an average 49 mmcfd in 2009 and 18 mmcfd in 2011.

It was declared abandoned when gas production dropped to 2.0-3.0 mmcfd at the end of 2013.

According to Petrobangla, an estimated 488 billion cubic feet (Bcf) of gas was produced from this gas field from 1998 to 2013.

Sangu was discovered by Cairn with a proven reserve of 800 Bcf. Its ownership was handed to Dutch Shell Oil Company with assets and liabilities in 1998.

But after steady production of gas for six years from Sangu, Shell gave all of its upstream assets and undertakings back to Cairn in 2004.Cairn sold the field to Santos in 2010.

Santos and its predecessors Cairn and Shell invested more than $1.0 billion in the Sangu gas field.

[email protected]