State-owned Bangladesh Petroleum Corporation (BPC) will start earth filling from November this year for the second crude oil refinery unit near Payra Seaport in Patuakhali. The new refinery would have the capacity to process five million tonnes of crude oil annually. Beside, the government planned to build a second unit of Eastern Refinery Ltd, the sole oil refinery in the country at present, to stave off dependency on imported oil, but the expansion never took place. Eastern Refinery currently processes 1.3 million tonnes of crude oil per year, with the capacity to process 1.5 million tonnes. Large oil tankers unload the crude oil to lighter vessels at sea, which carry it to Eastern Refineries for distillation.

Source: Dhaka Tribune July 13, 2017 04:30 UTC