Bangladesh has turned down a proposal by the American company, Unocal, to extract gas for export to India through a pipeline.

Unocal officials said they sought permission to export the gas because the domestic market was not big enough to handle their output.

Bangladeshi officials, however, say they will allow such exports only after ensuring it has 50 years worth of reserves for its domestic use.

Unocal is the largest US company in Bangladesh with an investment of about $500m in three gas fields.

Officials of the company said last week they had sent a formal proposal to the government to allow them to export natural gas to India.

Untapped reserves

Unocal's plan is to supply 500 million cubic feet of gas per day to central Indian provinces through a pipeline.

A company spokesman said the move was imperative because of the size of the domestic market and the fact that the government did not have enough money to purchase gas from them.

The Secretary of the Energy Ministry, Akmal Hossain, told the BBC the government would not consider any such requests until it gets the result of a geological survey being carried out jointly with the United States Geological Survey.

Foreign companies say that Bangladesh has a potential recoverable reserve of 33 trillion cubic feet.

However, official figures show that proven reserves are currently a little over 10 trillion cubic feet.