India and Bangladesh locked horns on the issue of hydrocarbon explorations overlapping each other?s maritime borders at the recently concluded Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC) summit.
Bangladesh does not agree that it has encroached India?s water territory in offering offshore blocks under its third licensing round. Instead, it contends that the deep-water blocks (in the Bay of Bengal), which India has offered in its sixth round of New Exploration Licensing Policy (NELP-6), has encroached Bangladesh waters.
Although discussions relating to issues of hydrocarbon exploration and demarcation of maritime border were on, Bangladesh is firm on its stand that whatever offshore blocks it has offered are within its territory, a top official of the Bangladesh diplomatic corp told FE.
Bangladesh deputy high commissione,r Syed Masud Mahmood Khundokor, had earlier, on the sidelines of an interactive session organised by the Bengal National Chamber of Commerce, said, ?The offshore blocks that Bangladesh government offered is within our maritime territory. Therefore there is no question of Bangladesh freshly demarcating the India-Bangladesh maritime border.?
However, India?s external affairs ministry sources said that even as Bangladesh was taking a rigid stand on the maritime border issue, Myanmar was on India?s side. ?Both India and Myanmar have jointly expressed concern over Bangladesh?s inclusion of India and Myanmar?s water territories, which, Bangladesh believes, is their territorial area in the offshore bidding package,? ministry officials said.
The Bangladesh government launched its third licensing round early 2008 and offered 27 offshore blocks for competitive bidding, focusing on offshore acreage extending up to 200 nautical miles into the Bay of Bengal. According to the bid offer, there are seven shallow-water blocks and 20 deep-water blocks, each with an exploration area ranging between 3,000 and 7,000 sq km. India has argued that these blocks overlap India?s territorial waters.
Bangladesh high commission officials contend that India has been exploring several blocks adjacent to Bangladesh territory. The blocks in the Bay of Bengal, just below Khulna and Satkhira, in which India has already discovered 100 trillion cubic feet of gas and 2 billion barrels of oil, falls within the Bangladesh territory. Mayanmar?s discovery of seven trillion cubic feet gas in an offshore area in 2007 has also overlapped Bangladesh?s maritime territory, officials argued.