British oil and gas firm Cairn Energy PLC will spend $117 million on further exploration and development drilling in Bangladesh's offshore gas fields, a senior government official said on Sunday.
"All the preparations have been completed and they will begin drilling by this week," A.M.M. Nasir Uddin, secretary of the government's energy and mineral resources division, told Reuters.
Cairn officials in Bangladesh said they had no comment on exploration in the Bay of Bengal.
Cairn has already completed 2D seismic surveys at Magnama in the Bay of Bengal, more than 60 kilometers (37.5 miles) south of the port city of Chittagong, according to Nasir. The possible gas reserve at the offshore field might be 3.5 trillion cubic feet (tcf), energy officials have said. Cairn will drill two wells in Magnama and later one in Hatiya, another offshore gas field, with a possible 1.8 tcf gas reserve, where they have already completed seismic surveys.