Factories, households reel from gas supply disruption across Bangladesh

Consumers across the country have been facing a gas supply shortage for three consecutive days due to disruptions in the offloading of imported LNG.

Factories in different parts of the country have halted production, CNG fuelling stations are running dry and households are struggling to cook since the shortage hit on Tuesday.

However, the situation began to alleviate on Thursday and will return to “100 per cent” normal by Friday afternoon, claims Md Rafiqul Islam, director of Petrobangla's Operations and Mines Department.

It will, however, take several hours for the restoration of regular supply at the fuel offloading to reach other parts of the country. As such, a gas supply crunch was still felt in Dhaka.

Alamgir Hossain, manager of a restaurant called Bhojan Bilas in Banasree, told bdnews24.com: "There has been no gas in the Banasree area for the past two days. It is still not available. There is a pipeline gas connection in the kitchen of my restaurant and LP gas in cylinders used in the open space for frying Roti and Paratha. For the past two days, we have been cooking using the LP gas stove as much as possible.”

Households are experiencing a similar situation - no gas, so no cooking. Those who have other options can adapt to the situation to some extent, but the rest face a dilemma.

Sadia Akhter, a resident of Shantinagar, said: "There was no gas supply problem for a long time. So, I don't even remember where my electric stove is. After suffering due to no gas supply for a day, I found the stove yesterday."

Calling the gas supply crisis an additional difficulty, she asked about the reasons for the supply crunch and queried whether it would be resolved soon.

Sharif, an employee of a small restaurant in Khilgaon, said: “I saw a larger number of customers in the restaurant yesterday (Thursday) morning than on other days. Later, I heard that many people could not cook at home due to the gas supply shortage.”

WHY THE SHORTAGE?

The floating LNG terminal in the Bay of Bengal could not be connected to the cargo ships due to adverse weather for the last two days. Hence, the gas supply has been disrupted.

Officials said that gas supply dropped by 1,000 million cubic feet of LNG to the national transmission system due to no offloading of LNG.

Petrobangla stopped publishing its daily report on gas supply since the issue began. However, the last report shows that the national transmission line supplied a little more than 2,800 million cubic feet of gas per day, which later dropped below 2,000 million cubic feet.

Cargo berthing was not possible at Summit LNG terminal and the Accelerate Energy terminal due to adverse weather. However, that issue was resolved by Thursday, the officials said.

Petrobangla Director Rafiqul told bdnews24.com that a little over 1,000 million cubic feet of gas was being supplied from the two floating LNG terminals as of 12:00 pm. In that case, the national transmission stands close to 2,850 million cubic feet.

“It means, the situation has returned to its previous state. Gradually, this will also reach the consumer level.”

Farhan Noor, secretary general of the Bangladesh CNG Filling Station and Conversion Workshop Owners Association, said: “Last Wednesday, there was no complaint of gas shortage in the CNG filling stations in most parts of the country. I don’t know what the situation was like yesterday. I heard that this happened because of a problem at the LNG terminal.”