For the first time, Bangladesh consumed almost one trillion cubic feet (TFC) of natural gas last year, a clear indication of the country’s fast growing energy demand. Petrobangla, the government’s oil and gas corporation, gave the information in their latest annual report, providing the picture of an ongoing gas crisis in which industry has not been getting enough gas, and has consumed less than the previous year. In contrast, domestic consumers got more gas this year than they did last year.

The corporation has indicated that the country’s gas reserve has decreased to 12.88 TCF in the producing and non-producing fields. “As the country’s economy is booming, the gas demand is increasing very rapidly. If we are able to supply gas supply to the industry, the demand could be 4000mmcf per day,” said Jameel A Aleem, Director (operations), Petrobangla.

Right now, Petrobangla supplies only 2691mmcf of gas to their consumers. To meet the gas demand, the government will start importing LNG( Liquefied Natural Gas) from April next year.

The recent annual report of Petrobangla, which was published last week, states that, last year, the consumers of gas consumed 9.73 billion cubic feet (BCF), which was close to one TCF, indication that the country’s gas consumption had doubled in within 10 years.

In 2006, Bangladesh consumed 527BCF of gas. In 2013 Petrobangla supplied 800BCF, in 2014 it supplied 820BCF, and in 2015 the country consumed 892BCF.

In the consumption pattern of the total gas, the power plants got the maximum supply, which was 41.33 per cent, captive power plants 16.63

per cent, industry 16.13 per cent, domestic 14.63 per cent, fertilizer factories 5.44 per cent, CNG 4.81 per cent, commercial 0.93 per cent and tea gardens 0.09 per cent.

In the previous year ( 2015), the power plants got 40.44 per cent gas of total production and domestic customers 13.47 per cent, captive plants 17.10 per cent, fertilizer factories 6.13 per cent , CNG 4.89 per cent, commercial and tea gardens 1.13 per cent and industry got 16.84 percent. Power and domestic customers got more gas than in the previous year.

Petrobangla claimed that they had paid a record tax of Tk 75,215.7 million to the National Board of Revenue (NBR). The amount was Tk 62,042.5 million in 2015 and Tk 53,779 million in 2014. The government organization gave a projection of the gas demand up to 2019. As per their projection, the current demand is 4.42 mmcf per day. In 2018 the demand would be 4211mmcfd and in 2019 the figure would be 4256mmcf per day.

In December 2016, Bangladesh had gas reserves (proven and probable) of 27.12 TCF, and out of that the consumption was 14.24 TCF, and remaining gas reserve was 12.88TCF .

Out of the total reserve, the producing fields had 12.16 TCF gas and non-operating fields the remaining amount of gas. The non-producing gas fields are Chattak, Kamta, Feni and Sungu. As per the Petrobangla data, Bibiyana has the biggest gas reserve with an amount of 3.223TCF, followed by Titas with 2.145 TCF, Kailashtilla with 2.112 TCF and Rasidpur with 1.84TCF of gas remaining to produce.

IK