The state-owned oil company Petrobangla on Tuesday warned that the gas supply across the country will drop with consumers experiencing low pressure in the piped gas supply due to three days of maintenance work in one of the country鈥檚 two 鈥榝loating storage and regasification units鈥� starting at 9:00am today.
The impending drop in the gas supply on the first day of New Year frustrated household customers and industrialists as well. Some areas in and adjacent to the聽 capital recently complained about gas supply falling to near zero, even with liquefied natural gas supply to Bangladesh鈥檚 optimum capacity.
The floating storage and regasification unit going for maintenance is owned by the Excelerate Energy Bangladesh Limited, which was the country鈥檚 first-ever such unit to start supplying imported liquefied natural gas on August 19, 2018.
LNG supply might drop to between 570mmcfd and 580mmcfd, said a Petrobangla press release, potentially resulting in 150mmcfd to 180mmcfd less gas supply to the power sector.
In other sector, the gas supply will drop between 50mmcfd and 70mmcfd, the press release said, regretting potential inconvenience caused.
On Tuesday, the last day of 2024, Petrobangla supplied 831.4mmcfd of LNG to the national grid. The overall supply was 2,764.1mmcfd. The power sector received 848.9mmcfd.
For a 100mmcfd drop in gas supply electricity production may reduce by 500MW. The current power demand of the country is about 10,000MW and there is officially no load shedding at the moment.
Petrobangla officials said that the maintenance work was not scheduled with the company informing about the maintenance work all of a sudden on Monday afternoon.
The other unit, the Summit LNG Terminal, remained offline in six of the first nine months of this year, according to a report of the US-based Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis.
The Summit-owned floating storage and regasification unit was on routine maintenance in Singapore between January 22 and March 31. It shut down again on May 24 after the cyclone Remal hit. The unit could not be reconnected for a reason or the other until on September 11, prompting the government to cancel four LNG shipments. LNG deliveries to the terminal resumed on September 19.
LNG imports through the first floating storage and regasification unit at Moheshkhali were disrupted for months during the monsoon in 2018.
In 2021, the Summit LNG terminal was out of service for three months due to a damaged mooring line, resulting in gas shortages for power plants, industries and households.
In May 2023, Cyclone Mocha shut down both the units, followed by maintenance work for the Moheshkhali terminal from November 2023 to January 2024.
Both the LNG import terminals have a contract to receive $500,000 every day as regasification charge, not subject to the actual amount of gas handled.