Gas crunch poised to ease with FSRU operation

Gas supply across Bangladesh may increase next week as another private-sector floating LNG-regasification unit looks all but ready to resume operation after an overhaul, sources say about a respite from fuel crunch.

Summit LNG Terminal Co Ltd, a subsidiary of Summit Group, is expected to resume liquefied natural gas (LNG) regasification at its FSRU on the Bay of Bengal after two months of lie-down, they say.

Summit's floating storage and regasification unit (FSRU) might return to Moheshkhali mooring facility early next week and initiate tying-up job before resuming operation, a senior Petrobangla official told the FE Monday.

The FSRU, which ceased operation in mid-January, was still under overhauling at a Singapore dry dock, he said.

"It's the FSRU's first overhauling since the beginning of commercial operation on April 30 in 2019," he said.

With resumption of Summit FSRU's operation country's overall LNG regasification capacity will increase to around 1,100mmcfd from 1,000mmcfd.

"Despite capacity constraints in regasification, the government has ramped up imports of LNG from spot market recently in view of falling prices of spot LNG in the international market," says a senior Petrobangla official.

The corporation is importing three spot LNG cargoes during March and four during April, among the highest spot LNG imports in a single month, the official adds.

Separately, the country's two long-term LNG suppliers from the gulf region- Qatargas and OQ Trading - are also supplying LNG in line with their annual delivery programmes.

The US-based Excelerate Energy's FSRU-Excellence-is currently re-gasifying around 655 mmcfd of LNG, which is around 9.16 per cent above its official capacity, to ensure better gas supply across Bangladesh.

A couple of months back, Excellence also had completed overhauling with expanded capacity to reinitiate LNG regasification during mid-January.

With the capacity enhancement Excellence's LNG regasification capacity has increased to around 170,000 cubic meters with a send-out capacity of 600mmcfd from its previous capacity of 138,000 cubic meters and send-out capacity of 500mmcfd.

Country's overall natural gas supply is currently hovering around 2,675mmcfd, including 655 mmcfd of regasified LNG, and there remains a huge unmet demand for the fuel especially from industries.

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