Bangladesh Foreign Minister AK Abdul Momen said Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi would jointly open the first cross-border oil pipeline on 18 March for diesel transportation to Bangladesh. The Foreign Ministry told this story Thursday afternoon at a briefing at the Foreign Ministry. He added: “The two leaders will inaugurate the pipeline on 18 March (through video conferencing)”. The Bangladesh foreign minister’s announcement came a week after he held talks with India’s External affairs minister, S. Jaishankar, in New Delhi on the sidelines of the G20 Foreign Ministers’ Meeting last week.
According to Bangladesh Petroleum Corporation (BPC) officials, India would export diesel through the 130-km India-Bangladesh Friendship Pipeline (IBFPL), built at a cost of around 3.46 billion Indian rupees drawn from the Indian line of credit (LoC). The pipeline stretches 125 km inside Bangladeshi territory and 5 km inside India. The two leaders joined the ground-breaking ceremony for the IBFPL in September 2018 through video conferencing. Bangladesh has so far imported diesel from India through railway carriages. Momen said, “I told them (the Indian side) to keep their promise (to ensure zero border killing),” Momen said, adding that New Delhi also reiterated that it did not want to see any killing along the frontier as in Bangladesh.
Momen said India gave high respect to the Bangladesh delegation throughout the G20 Foreign Ministers’ Meeting, reflecting the excellent Dhaka-Delhi bilateral relations.