Bangladesh to buy oil from Kuwait at premium

Dhaka: Bangladesh will import 1.152 million tonnes of oil from Kuwait for consumption over the July-December period by paying a higher premium, a senior energy official said yesterday.

The purchase was proposed by the state-run Bangladesh Petroleum Corporation (BPC), the country's sole importer and distributor of fuel oil, and was likely to be approved by a government purchase committee yesterday, said Mohammad Mohsin, secretary of government energy and mineral resources division.

"The BPC has agreed to pay a higher premium cost to import diesel, kerosene, jet fuel and petroleum oil," he said.

The BPC annually imports nearly 2.2 million tonnes of refined oil from the state-run Kuwait Petroleum Corporation (KPC), almost 70 per cent of total demand for petroleum products. The total demand for refined and crude oil in the country is 3.8 million tonnes.