Bangladesh will launch on March 10 an international bidding round for the blocks in the Bay of Bengal, Zanendra Nath Sarker, chairman of state-owned oil and gas firm Petrobangla, told Reuters in an interview on Tuesday. Bangladesh has set the deadline for receiving bids for the blocks for the first week of September 2024.
Declining local currency and foreign exchange reserves, coupled with high energy prices on the spot market in 2022 and 2023, plunged Bangladesh in an energy crisis, which Reuters estimated in June last year as the worst in a decade.