Already nearly two years behind schedule, Bangladesh's ambitious Single Point Mooring (SPM) project in Chittagong is likely to miss yet another deadline. One of this country's top priority infrastructure programmes, the SPM project is aimed at offloading imported crude oil at reduced cost and time. Initially chasing a December 2019 deadline, the project's latest timeline extension came in July last year. However, highly placed sources told UNB that even the revised June 2022 deadline for the project may be pushed by a couple of months -- till August next year, at least -- due to labour shortage in the wake of Covid-19 and the consequent lockdown. Read:Covid-19 to further delay Single Point Mooring (SPM) project in Chattogram In fact, some 200 Chinese workers who were supposed to come to Bangladesh for the project, have been stuck in their home country since the outbreak of Covid in December 2019, the sources said. “The Chinese contractor executing the SPM project on behalf of the state-owned Bangladesh Petroleum Corporation (BPC) has sought another deadline extension," said an official of Eastern Refinery Limited, a subsidiary of BPC. "We have forwarded the request to the higher authorities. Some 65 percent of work at the site is complete, but we will need another year (till August) to make the SPM project operational," said the official, who did not wish to be named. Read Bangladesh explores JV agricultural projects with South Africa When contacted, the managing director of ERL, Lokman Hossain, admitted the project’s current status but was quick to attribute the delay to Covid-19. "Though the laying of submarine pipelines has been completed, the SPM floating buoy is yet to reach the country. We hope it will arrive here by November this year.  Six oil tanks at Maheshkhali in Cox’s Bazar also have to be installed," he said.  The SPM project was undertaken by BPC in 2012 to transport imported crude oil to the state-owned Eastern Refinery plant in Chittagong in order to reduce the transportation cost of crude oil fuel and also ensure prompt unloading from deep sea vessels. Read Red tapes are holding back the much-hyped Sundarbans conservation project