New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Bangladesh counterpart Sheikh Hasina will jointly inaugurate the first cross-border oil pipeline between the two countries on March 18 for diesel transportation. Speaking at a Ministry of Foreign Affairs press conference on Thursday, Foreign Minister Dr AK Abdul Momen said, “The two premiers will inaugurate the pipeline on March 18 (through video conferencing)”.
“Good news is India will send us diesel. The pipeline has been completed,” Momen said, as per Bangladesh’s official news agency BSS.
The report quoted Bangladesh Petroleum Corporation officials as saying that New Delhi would use the 130 km India-Bangladesh Friendship Pipeline (IBFP), built from approximately Rs 3.46 billion, drawn from the Indian Line of Credit (LoC), to export diesel to Dhaka.
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Bangladesh-India Cross-Border Oil Pipeline
A long-term agreement was signed in 2017 to import diesel from India to Bangladesh through the pipeline, which stretches from West Bengal’s Siliguri to a Meghna petroleum depot in Dinajpur’s Parbatipur, BDNews reported.
The bilateral project launched in March 2020 had an initial deadline of June 2022 that was pushed back another year due to complications from the COVID-19 pandemic, the report mentioned.
The pipeline stretches 125 km inside Bangladesh’s territory and 5 km inside India.
Previously, Bangladesh used railway carriages to import diesel from India.
The two premiers also joined the ground-breaking ceremony for the IBFPL in September 2018 through video conferencing, the report mentioned.
India also withdrew its objection to Dhaka building any establishment inside 150 yards of Bangladesh territory along the zero lines, Momen said.
“Now we can start our projects (along the frontier),” the foreign minister was quoted as saying in the report.
Foreign Minister of Bangladesh Dr. Momen met his Indian counterpart today. They exchanged greetings and discussed issues of bilateral interests. pic.twitter.com/f2O0PKbbzi
— Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Bangladesh (@BDMOFA) March 3, 2023
The announcement BFPL launch by Momen has come a week after he held talks with his Indian counterpart, External Affairs Minister Dr S Jaishankar on the sidelines of the G20 Foreign Ministers’ meeting last week in New Delhi.
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