Dhaka (Platts)--15Nov2012/339 am EST/839 GMT

Bangladesh Petroleum Corporation imported around 1.0 million mt of crude and refined oil products over July-September, down 15% from 1.15 million mt a year ago, a senior BPC official said Thursday.

The import volumes were lower as the country was in cost-cutting mode shutting some of the oil-fired power plants due to rising international oil prices, the BPC official said.

Bangladesh's oil import bill over July-September, the first quarter of the fiscal year 2012-13 (July-June), fell 7.49% to $1.106 billion from $1.195 billion a year ago, a central bank official said.

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BPC had earlier sought a government subsidy of Taka 28.74 billion ($350.43 million) to import oil during the period, but the government allocated only Taka 15 billion, down 56.82% from Taka 34.74 billion it provided to BPC in the year-ago period, the BPC official said.

Meanwhile, BPC plans to import 5.9 million mt of crude oil and refined products in the fiscal year 2012-13, up 11.3% from 5.3 million mt a year ago, the BPC official said.

BPC currently has term deals until December 2012 to import refined oil products from Kuwait Petroleum Corp.; Petco, the trading arm of Malaysia's state-owned Petronas; the Philippine National Oil Company; Emirates National Oil Company; Egypt's Middle East Oil Refinery; the Maldives National Oil Company; state-owned PetroChina and Indonesia's Bumi Siak Pusako, the BPC official said.

It also has deals to import crude oil from Saudi Aramco and the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, he added.

--Mohammad Azizur Rahman, newsdesk@platts.com --Edited by Elston Soares, elston_soares@platts.com

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