Excelerate CFO Nick Bedford and representatives from IFC, the Bangladeshi government, Petrobangla, and project lenders at the signing ceremony in Dhaka.
IFC, a member of the World Bank Group, and Excelerate Energy Bangladesh Limited (Excelerate) are co-developing the Moheshkhali Floating LNG project – Bangladesh’s first liquefied natural gas (LNG) import terminal. The project will be located offshore Moheshkhali island in the Bay of Bengal with a project cost of $179.5 million. IFC and Excelerate today announced securing the debt financing for the project to help expand access to clean energy in Bangladesh. The equity for the project had been tied up earlier with IFC coming in with a contribution of $10.8 million and Excelerate’s equity amount of $43.1 million.
As lead arranger for the project, IFC helped arrange the debt financing package of $125.7 million for the LNG project including IFC’s loan of $32.8 million from its own account and the balance from CDC Group, DEG, FMO and JICA. The funding will support the timely construction and installation of the fixed infrastructure required for the project.
Bangladesh’s first LNG import terminal will enable Petrobangla, the state-owned energy company, to increase natural gas supply in the country by up to 20 percent, sufficient to support up to 3,000 MW of power generation capacity. The construction of the terminal will commence in the fourth quarter of 2017 and is expected to be in service by mid-2018.
Honorable Adviser to the Prime Minister of Bangladesh Dr. Tawiq-E-Elahi Chowdhury presided over the signing.
The terminal is the first fully integrated turnkey floating terminal solution whereby all services will be provided under a single contract by a single provider – Excelerate. The concession agreements for the project can serve as a template for other LNG projects in the country.
The Moheshkhali Floating LNG terminal will provide the critical infrastructure required for the country to access natural gas from global markets which is especially important considering declining domestic natural gas reserves, limited hydro and wind resources, scarce land availability for large-scale solar deployment, and increasing dependence on expensive, imported liquid fuels in the country.
The terminal will include the provision of one of Excelerate’s existing floating storage and regasification units (FSRU), the installation of a subsea buoy system anchored offshore, and the employment of port service vessels during operation. The FSRU will have 138,000 cubic meters of LNG storage capacity.
