DHAKA, Sept 14: Bangladesh plans to invite foreign firms for offshore gas exploration to meet soaring demand for energy to sustain the nation’s fast-growing economy, an official said on Friday.

The offshore bidding to explore gas in the Bay of Bengal will open by year end. It will be the third offshore bidding round in the history of the South Asian country.

“Both India and Myanmar have found gas in the Bay of Bengal and we’re confident there would also be major discoveries in the Bangladesh part of the Bay,” energy secretary Nasir Uddin said.

Bangladesh needs to urgently locate new sources of energy.

The government’s energy master plan forecast that at present rates of consumption the nation’s current gas reserves will run out by 2014-15.

Under the plan, the country needs at least $7.7 billion investment in gas exploration and development to sustain projected annual economic growth of seven per cent till 2025, Nasir said.

Bangladesh’s economy has been growing at over six per cent annually in the last four years, the highest rate of growth since its independence in 1971. The central bank has forecast that growth will hit seven per cent in the current financial year which ends in June 2008.

Bangladesh, home to South Asia’s biggest gas reserves, was divided into 23 blocks for hydrocarbon exploration after the government amended the country’s Petroleum Act in 1993.

British oil company Cairn Energy won the first offshore exploration rights in June 1994. It struck gas in Sangu in the Bay of Bengal in 1997 and started production in 1998.

The government allowed a second round of exploration for onshore blocks in 1997.

Bangladesh has proven recoverable gas reserves of 15 trillion cubic feet of which 7.1 trillion cubic feet have already been extracted from the country’s 23 gas fields, according to official figures.

The energy secretary said foreign companies, which have been operating in the on-shore blocks, have stepped up their exploration drive to meet growing domestic demand for gas.

“Cairn Energy will drill a well near a southern Bangladesh island at the end of this year. French energy giant Total will also start exploration work in two blocks near the Bay of Bengal later this year,” he added.—AFP