New Gas Shipment Brings Relief to Bangladesh’s Energy Shortage
A new ship carrying liquefied natural gas (LNG) has arrived in Bangladesh. This delivery will help ease the country’s recent gas shortage. Gas supply to the national pipeline restarted on Saturday afternoon. This happened after a three-day stop.
The new supply began at Excelerate Energy’s terminal in the Bay of Bengal. Supply had stopped on Wednesday due to a lack of new cargo. Now, the terminal is sending gas to the pipeline again. This will slowly increase the overall gas supply in Bangladesh. Full relief from the crisis may take several more days.
Petrobangla manages Bangladesh’s LNG imports. Its unit, Rupantarita Prakritik Gas Company Limited (RPGCL), handles the imports. Excelerate Energy began supplying 100 million cubic feet of gas from 2 PM. This amount was expected to increase later on Saturday night.
Bangladesh has been importing LNG since 2018. This helps cover a shortfall from declining domestic gas production. The country has two floating LNG terminals at Maheshkhali. One is operated by US company Excelerate Energy. The other is run by local company Summit.
Excelerate Energy’s terminal faced problems earlier. A fire shut it down on July 21. It was ready to supply gas again by August 15. However, no new LNG cargo arrived. So, it could only provide partial supply from its reserves.
Summit’s terminal also faced issues. It supplied gas above its normal capacity for a time. But then Summit also had to stop supply due to a lack of LNG. This made the gas shortage worse.
Bangladesh needs about 3.8 billion cubic feet of gas daily. The country usually supplies around 2.7 billion cubic feet. This includes 1.05 billion cubic feet from LNG imports. The rest comes from local gas fields.
For the past month, LNG supply was only about half of what it should be. On Saturday, LNG supply was 580 million cubic feet at noon. It rose to 680 million cubic feet in the afternoon. The total gas supply reached 2.3 billion cubic feet.
If LNG supply reaches 750 million cubic feet, total supply will be 2.37 billion cubic feet. This level may continue for a few days. So, the gas crisis will not end immediately.
The Energy Division had tried to buy several LNG cargoes quickly. They sought lower prices outside the usual tender process. Four such cargoes were planned for August, but none arrived. This caused the terminals to run out of LNG.
Since December 18, authorities used regular tenders to secure two LNG cargoes for this month. One ship arrived on Saturday afternoon and began unloading. The second LNG cargo is expected to arrive between August 26 and 27.
