Military background

In March 1973, Abedin was commissioned in the East Pakistan Army, then later the newly formed Bangladesh Army, where he served alongside Sheikh Kamal, son of former President Sheikh Mujibur Rahman of Bangladesh. In February 1984, he retired from the military, ranked a Major to work in the private sector.^[17]

Occidental Petroleum and Unocal (Chevron)

Abedin personally initiated the $230 million (£123.9m) deal with Unocal Corporation (now Chevron Corporation) in 2004, on behalf of Bangladesh, after getting approval from the Prime Minister Khaleda Zia.^[18][19] This was at the Bibiyana field, which was located roughly around 180 miles north-east of the capital Dhaka, and had a reserve of 2.4 trillion cubic feet of gas; it was found by Unocal in 1998. When asked about the 1997 blowout of the Magurchhara gas field, caused by Occidental Petroleum (later taken over by Chevron) and the resulting $6.12 billion suit against Chevron Corporation, (of which only TK 380,000,000 was paid in damages) and why nothing was done of it, he said "Ask the government".^[20] He also received objection letters from Tullow Oil, when they objected the sell out of Chevron Texaco interests to Niko Resources and the Government of Bangladesh.

Niko Resources

Between 2003 and 2006, Niko Resources was possibly involved in a corruption scandal involving the $750 million Tengratila and Feni gas fields in Bangladesh (the company accidentally caused an explosion, initially refused to pay for damages and gave the Minister responsible for overseeing compensation claims an expensive vehicle; Niko eventually did compensate the 620 affected families). Investigation into corruption allegations were made by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in January 2009. Blowout or failure of equipments are generally out of human control and scope. Most planned and prepared operations can fail against response from Mother Nature.^[21][22]

In an attempt to blackmail the government of Bangladesh, Niko Resources suspended gas supply from the Feni gas field, Abedin sharply reacted by saying that they (Petrobangla under Bangladesh) might be constrained to take serious steps under the laws of Bangladesh.^[23] Abedin formally claimed compensations from Niko Resources, after both Begum Khaleda Zia, the Prime Minister of Bangladesh and the Energy Advisor approved it. In his letter, Abedin outline Niko's duty to supply three billion cubic feet (BCF) of gas free of cost for burning the same amount of gas in Tengratila, and also compensate Petrobangla for another 5.89 BCF of gas burnt at the sub-surface level. The letter also sought Tk 840 million as compensation for damage to environment, after Niko paid Tk 25 million to the local people.^[24][25] Later, Abedin met with President and CEO of Niko Resources at the Energy Division meeting along with the Energy Secretary to resolve pending issues.^[26]

Rexwood-Oakland

Petrobangla was later allegedly involved in a non-bid negotiation with US Based joint venture of Oakland-Rexwood, the latter stating that it would invest $60 million.

In 1998 and 1999, Enron Corporation was also selected for the blocks alongside Oakland, where Enron proposed 80 percent share for themselves, and the rest for Oakland. The High Court of Bangladesh, placed a ban on signing any Production sharing agreement with any international oil company in December 2001, the same year that Enron Corporation went bankrupt for the Enron scandal. Production sharing agreement head, Abedin outright rejected the notion, saying it was just a visit to the National Energy Sector, adding that they did not have a specific proposal. The Oakland-Rexwood blocks were later operated by Tullow Oil.^[27][28]

Water Board Authority and Development

After Petrobangla, Abedin was made the managing director of the Dhaka Water and Sewerage Authority (WASA), by the military-backed government of Bangladesh. He was given charge of the sector when ammonia and other impurities concentrations were severely high, which resulted in his taking an initiative to set a pre-treatment plant for controlling the ammonia concentration. It was to be supervised by Danish International Development Agency of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Kingdom of Denmark and funded by Asian Development Bank. He also talked about the World Bank-funded sewage treatment facility that improves water conditions.^[29]

The national board was already on the deep end of the water shortage, by at least 350 million litres, with the demand for the metropolitan capital of Dhaka being around 2 billion L. The national electricity crisis of the power grid was a major problem, as due to low voltage and frequent blackouts, maximum capacity could not be delivered.^[30][31] Raihanul Abedin was shocked by the previous paper works. Dhaka had a population of over 6 million but Dhaka Wasa had only 150 thousand customers. This proved why Dhaka Wasa was suffering from major losses in revenue since the beginning of time. Abedin took that into mind and founded a team that will go from house to house and inquire about their and water supplies. By the time Abedin resigned from his post, Dhaka Wasa's revenue went up by almost 300% and for the first time in the history of Dhaka Wasa, it was a profitable organisation. There were many complaints that there wasn't sufficient water to fulfill the basic demands of the public of Dhaka so Abedin devised a plan to construct another water treatment plant. After hearing negative comments from many experienced and influential people such as "no one could do it in the last 20 years and no one can do it now, just relax and let things be as it is", Abedin took nothing into importance and devised a plan to get the job done. He contacted World Bank for funds and after the approval came from World Bank, he gained the approval of the Chief Advisor. After three years the plans were passed, the construction for the new phase is currently under way. Abedin's dream to fulfill the demands of the public is actually coming true. He was asked by a journalist whether he would mind if his name wouldn't be mentioned in this project and he replied kindly, "I did this for the good of the public, I just did my job, and seeing the public pleased is all I could ever want. Cutting a red ribbon is not a big deal".

Health issues became a concern, once researchers and studies found that various chemical concentrations were found to be ten times higher than the standards set by World Health Organization. This, according to the board was due to the disposal of industrial effluents that no government board monitored regularly at the time.^[32]

In 2008, the online billing system was introduced for the utility board and it heralded mixed signals from the citizens mainly because of spotty Internet services and in 2009, WASA increased water tariff by 20 percent, only after a month after a five percent increase in tariff.^[33] He said that it was due to frequent power outage, which is why pumps have to be often run by generators, which is contributing to a rise in water lifting cost.^[34]

By mid 2009, the water crisis was so large and widespread, that WASA decided to transport tanks of water on trucks to major areas of the capital. Earlier the same month, he said that "due to dependence on deep tube wells, water layers in the city are dropping around three metres a year on average" about the excessive use of underground water of the capital through around a thousand illegal deep tube wells, and filling up of low-lying land, canals and water bodies are causing the underground water level to drop alarmingly. Various researchers say that this could put the citizens in severe water crisis in the future and also cause land to subside.^[35] As a result, the capital braced for one of their history's worst water logging problems, that Abedin believed was resulted from unauthorised buildings being built on land filled up from ponds and lakes.^[36] He also brought attention to more than a 100,000 illegal links in the national water supply network which costs the nation around Tk 350 million a year.^[37]