November 11, 2007	Sunday	Shawwal 29, 1428

DHAKA, Nov 10: Oil production at Bangladesh’s lone Eastern Refinery Limited (ERL) has been started after a two-week closure for maintenance, a senior official said on Saturday.

ERL, the state-run refinery located at Chittagong with 1.5 million tons of refinery capacity of crude oil, supplies refined oil to three state-owned oil firms -- Padma, Meghna and Jamuna -- for distribution across the country.

ERL was closed on October 22 for maintenance works, the official said.

“The maintenance works are routinely done each year. The machinery and other establishments of the factory are repaired and renovated,” Rezaul Alam, a general manager of Eastern Refinery Limited, said.

He said there was no oil crisis in the country following maintenance as all the preparatory work for supplying fuel was done before overhauling, he told Reuters.

The energy ministry has sought a $300 million loan from Jeddah-based Islamic Development Bank to expand its capacity three times to 4.5 million tons.

The ERL also refines condensates collected from the country’s natural gas fields to petrol and diesel. Bangladesh’s present condensate production is 5,000 barrels per day.

Bangladesh imports 3.8 million tons of fuel every year, including about 1.5 million tonnes of crude oil, officials said.—Reuters