On May 24, one of Bangladesh’s largest business groups sent the new Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) government an ambitious proposal.
Bashundhara Oil and Gas Company Limited wanted permission to import and market enormous quantities of refined petroleum on its own: as much as two million tonnes of diesel a year, 200,000 tonnes of octane, 150,000 tonnes of petrol and up to one million tonnes of furnace oil.
The application, signed by Sayem Sobhan Anvir, the chairman of Bashundhara Group, sought access to a part of Bangladesh’s economy that the state has historically treated differently from almost every other commodity market — the supply and distribution of the fuels that move its buses and trucks, power its farms and factories and, increasingly, keep its electricity system running.
The proposal asked the government to allow Bashundhara to import, sell and market refined fuels under its own arrangements. In making its case, the company said it had years of experience operating its refinery and argued that Bangladesh’s petroleum demand would rise to roughly nine million to 10 million tonnes by 2030.
The volumes it proposed handling were substantial — 1.5 million to two million tonnes of diesel alone, alongside hundreds of thousands o f tonnes of other fuels.
What happened afterward, according to government documents reviewed by Daily Waadaa, illustrates how rapidly a potentially transformative change in Bangladesh’s fuel economy has begun moving through the bureaucracy.
On July 2, the Energy and Mineral Resources Division forwarded Bashundhara’s application to the Bangladesh Petroleum Corporation, or BPC, the state agency who controls the country’s petroleum supply system.
It instructed BPC to examine the application against existing petroleum laws and regulations and provide its opinion.
Twelve days later, BPC created an 11-member committee to do just that.
The July 14 order is particularly revealing. It told the committee to examine not merely whether Bashundhara was technically capable of entering the business, but the consequences of allowing it to do so: the legal implications; the enormous annual import volumes sought by the company; the likely effect on the state-controlled marketing companies Padma, Meghna and Jamuna; the implications for government revenue; storage and distribution capacity; energy security; and whether the arrangement would preserve a competitive market.
For a decision touching nearly every part of Bangladesh’s fuel-supply architecture, the committee was given two working days to submit its recommendations.
Then the chairman of BPC was removed.
On the night of July 26, the government made Md Rezanur Rahman an officer on special duty and removed him from the corporation. No official explanation tying his removal to the Bashundhara proposal has been produced.
But people familiar with the energy sector said Rezanur Rahman had faced pressure over proposals to open fuel imports and marketing to private participation and over the exclusion of politically influential companies from a separate shortlist of prospective refined-oil suppliers.
Online portal Jago News reported the same concerns at the time, while saying the reason for his removal could not independently be confirmed.
A week later, on August 2, the government placed Md Ziaul Haque, an additional secretary in the Energy and Mineral Resources Division, in additional charge of BPC.
Four days after that appointment, according to another government instruction described by officials familiar with the process, the Energy Division told BPC to prepare a draft “Private-Sector Refined Fuel Import, Storage, Transportation, Distribution and Marketing Policy 2026.”
The deadline was August 10. BPC was effectively given four days to draft the framework for opening one of Bangladesh’s most strategically important state-controlled markets to private companies.
Taken individually, none of those steps constitutes final approval for Bashundhara. The documents reviewed for this article do not establish that BOGCL has already been granted an unconditional licence to import millions of tonnes of refined fuel.
Taken together, however, they point to something consequential. That after years of hesitation and resistance inside the petroleum bureaucracy, the machinery needed to accommodate Bashundhara’s proposal is moving unusually quickly.
And Bashundhara is not arriving at this door for the first time.
For nearly a decade, the conglomerate has pursued a larger position in Bangladesh’s petroleum trade. Its Keraniganj operation produces bitumen as well as petroleum by-products, and it has previously sold some of those products to BPC.
In 2024, The Daily Star newspaper reported that BOGCL was poised to become the country’s first private company allowed to market petroleum products refined from imported crude.
BPC officials said at the time that other companies had expressed interest, but Bashundhara was the only applicant whose submission was being actively considered.
The framework itself drew allegations that it had effectively been tailored to the company. Applicants were required to have refinery capacity of at least 1.5 million tonnes of crude annually and turnover of at least 5000 crore taka during each of the preceding three years, requirements that industry figures said sharply narrowed the prospective field.
The previous Awami League government went even further.
In June 2024, less than two months before Sheikh Hasina’s government collapsed, the Energy Division informed BPC that Bashundhara had been permitted to import crude petroleum, refine it and store, transport and sell the resulting products under its own arrangements, according to official documents reported by Prothom Alo newspaper.
BPC notified Bashundhara of the permission in July. The approval came with 37 conditions, including requirements governing how much fuel the company could sell itself and how much it would have to supply to BPC.
Talking with Waadaa, a former BPC official who preferred anonymity said, after the fall of the Hasina government that the corporation had repeatedly resisted allowing private companies to sell fuel directly. The 2023 policy governing privately imported crude had essentially been developed around Bashundhara’s proposal.
Bashundhara had first sought permission to sell fuel independently as far back as 2017, and BPC initially recommended against it. The latest proposal is therefore not simply the return of an old application.
It would potentially expand the principle considerably, from processing imported crude under a tightly conditioned framework to allowing private companies to import already refined petroleum and participate directly in its storage, transportation, distribution and marketing, the former BPC official told Waadaa.
BPC has long acted as a buffer between volatile international petroleum markets and domestic consumers. It imports much of the country’s fuel, supplies state-controlled marketing companies and operates within a system in which the government retains considerable influence over prices and inventories.
Introducing competition is not inherently evidence of wrongdoing, said the industry experts. Private participation could, in theory, diversify supply, increase storage and logistics capacity and reduce pressure on a government agency that must finance enormous petroleum purchases, they said.
Bangladesh also has a genuine supply problem.
The current gas shortage has pushed the country toward more expensive oil-fired electricity generation. Oil plants recently supplied only about 16% of electricity while accounting for roughly 39% of recorded fuel and power-import costs, according to the data of the Ministry of Power, Energy and Mineral Resources.
Gas-fired electricity averaged 3.48 taka per kilowatt-hour in that period, while oil-fired power cost 18.59 taka.
A fire at an LNG terminal in Moheshkhali further reduced gas supplies, contributing to shortages that have forced power producers to rely more heavily on diesel and furnace oil.
It is precisely because fuel has become so consequential, critics say, that the way the government is restructuring the market deserves greater scrutiny.
The volume requested by Bashundhara alone could give the company significant weight in the national petroleum trade. Bangladesh’s annual petroleum demand has been around seven million tonnes in recent years; Bashundhara’s upper-end request covers as much as two million tonnes of diesel, plus up to one million tonnes of furnace oil and additional petrol and octane.
“The question is therefore not merely whether Bangladesh should admit private companies into fuel distribution,” energy expert Shamsul Alam told Waadaa, “it is whether the country is constructing a competitive market or creating the conditions under which one already dominant conglomerate could acquire extraordinary leverage over a strategic commodity.”
That concern has acquired another dimension because of the company seeking entry.
Bashundhara Group and members of the Sobhan family are currently entangled in a series of corruption and money-laundering proceedings.
In February, the Anti-Corruption Commission filed a case against Bashundhara Group Chairman Ahmed Akbar Sobhan and 25 others over allegations involving 1325 crore taka in loans approved for Bashundhara Multi Food Products Limited.
The commission alleged loan fraud, embezzlement and money laundering. According to the ACC, 575 crore taka was issued as funded loans and more than 500 crore taka was subsequently transferred into accounts belonging to other Bashundhara entities. The allegations remain subject to adjudication.
That was not the first case.
In December 2025, the commission filed another case against Ahmed Akbar Sobhan, two of his sons and National Bank officials. That case concerned 1350 crore taka in loans issued to Bashundhara Import & Export Limited and allegations that 600 crore taka of the funded loans was diverted and laundered.
The ACC alleged that the loans had been sanctioned on false financial statements, without sufficient collateral and without adequately assessing repayment capacity.
Courts have also imposed restrictions on assets belonging to the family while ACC inquiries continue.
In April 2025, a Dhaka court ordered 70 bank accounts associated with Ahmed Akbar Sobhan and seven family members frozen and also froze more than 754 million shares in 22 companies.
The order followed an ACC application alleging that members of the family had transferred funds abroad and acquired assets without required regulatory approval. The allegations have not been proved at trial.
Earlier that year, another court order targeted a flat in Dubai’s Burj Khalifa and investments in European and British companies linked to members of the family, including Sayem Sobhan Anvir, while the ACC investigated allegations of illicit wealth and money laundering.
In April this year, a Dhaka court also rejected requests by Ahmed Akbar Sobhan and four relatives to travel abroad. Prosecutors told the court that Sobhan was an accused in multiple cases.
None of those proceedings establishes that Bashundhara Oil and Gas Company itself is legally unqualified to obtain a petroleum licence. Nor does an accusation against executives or related companies automatically disqualify another company within the group.
But they raise a governance question on what level of due diligence should Bangladesh demand before granting a business group facing active allegations of loan diversion and money laundering a potentially pivotal position in the national fuel supply?
The government documents show BPC's July committee was specifically asked to consider energy security, competition, existing marketing companies and government revenue.
Yet the order does not identify the pending ACC cases or the group’s financial and legal exposure as a separate subject for examination. And the two-working-day deadline gives little indication of how an 11-member committee was expected to conduct a comprehensive assessment of all those issues in that period.
The pace has alarmed organised labour inside the petroleum sector.
The Bangladesh Oil and Gas Workers Federation has publicly opposed the effort, describing the consideration of Bashundhara’s application as a warning sign for national energy security. Its leaders have said a strategic sector should not be allowed to become dependent on a single private business group.
Their argument draws heavily on Bangladesh’s experience with liquefied petroleum gas. LPG is nominally subject to government-set prices, but consumers have repeatedly paid above those prices during periods of tight supply.
Petroleum workers and consumer advocates fear that a private company with enough control over storage, imports and distribution of diesel and other fuels could eventually acquire similar pricing leverage.
Shamsul Alam, the energy expert who is an adviser to the Consumers Association of Bangladesh, has argued that transferring petroleum supply from state control to powerful private businesses could make not only consumers but the government itself dependent on those companies.
Similar warnings were raised when Bashundhara received its earlier permission. Shamsul Alam told Prothom Alo newspaper in 2024 that Bangladesh’s experience with private-sector energy markets had made price control difficult and that petroleum should remain under government control.
Waadaa contacted the new BPC chairman but didn’t receive any reply from him.
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