The Advisers Council Committee on Government Purchase (ACCGP) on Tuesday cancelled the tender for appointing an Operations and Maintenance (O&M) contractor for the Single Point Mooring (SPM) project.

The committee approved the cancellation when Energy and Mineral Resources Division placed the proposal at the meeting chaired by Finance Adviser Dr Salehuddin Ahmed at the Secretariat.

Earlier, on November 21, 2024, the government had approved in principle the appointment of China Petroleum Pipeline Engineering Company Ltd (CPPEC) as the O&M contractor on a government-to-government (G2G) basis.

The approval was given in a meeting of the Advisers Council Committee on Economic Affairs (ACCEA) .

The CPPEC had been working as the contractor for the SPM project and BPC selected the firm for the O&M job without any competitive bidding process.

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The proposal was moved to ACCEA by the Energy and Mineral Resources Division under the Speedy Increase of Power and Energy Supply (Special Provision) Act 2010.

But a few days after the approval, the government repealed the Speedy Increase of Power and Energy Supply (Special Provision) Act 2010 on 1 December following an order from the High Court that removed the scope for signing the contract with the Chinese firm.

The SPM, built on 90 acres of land in Maheshkhali Upazila, Cox's Bazar, is a government-to-government (G2G) initiative between Bangladesh and China, completed at a cost of Tk8,341 crore.

The state-owned BPC undertook the project to streamline the offloading of petroleum products and their transportation via pipeline.

The facility features a 36-inch-wide pipeline that transports crude oil from the mooring point to storage tanks at Kalamarchara in Matarbari. From there, the oil is moved 220 kilometres to the Eastern Refinery in Patenga, Chittagong, via an 18-inch-wide pipeline. The entire 110-km pipeline connects the deep-sea mooring point to the refinery.