Power plants getting highest ever gas supply from Petrobangla

---

M Azizur Rahman
Gas supply to the country's power plants by Petrobangla has been increased substantially to boost power generation in the scorching summer thanks to the closure of three gas-consuming fertliser factories.
The gas-fired power plants Tuesday consumed around 780 million cubic feet per day (mmcfd), which is the maximum in the country's history, a senior Petrobangla official told the FE.
Yet electricity generation of 442 megawatts (mw) was hampered only due to gas shortage, said the Power Development Board (PDB).
A total of 605mw of electricity generation was hampered due to forced outage and emergency maintenance of some power plants across the country.
Total gas production was around 1916 mmcfd Tuesday, whereas the total consumption in power plants, industries, fertiliser factories and households across the country were 1905 mmcfd.
Country's gas production has been hovering over 1900 mmcfd in last several days riding on mounting output of onshore gas supplies especially by the international oil companies (IOCs).
The government has been putting extra pressure on gas producers especially the IOCs to augment gas supplies from their fields to feed the power plants.
Closure of three fertilizer factories -Urea Fertiliser Factory Ltd (UFFL), Polash Urea Fertliser Factory Ltd (PUFL) and Chittagong Urea Fertiliser Factory Ltd (CUFL) - helped in the supply of additional 100 mmcfd of gas to the power plants.
The power plants in the previous years would get around maximum 700mmcfd of gas to generate electricity.
"We are now producing gas at optimum capacity to feed the power plants," Petrobangla Acting Chairman M Muqtadir Ali told the FE Tuesday.
Country's total 18 operational gas fields are now supplying around 40-50 mmcfd more than their total official production capacity of 1,870 mmcfd as the authorities were pressing hard to make sure plants got adequate gas supply for power generation.
Gas output by the IOCs accounted for 1022 mmcfd from six gas operational fields against their production capacity of 943 mmcfd.
The state-owned gas companies produced a total of 894mmcfd from 12 operational gas fields against their production capacity of 927mmcfd.
Energy experts feared that the gas field structure might be damaged if the government continues pressing on augmenting gas supplies above their production capacities.
The country has been facing an acute crisis of gas since 2007, which has hit scores of industrial plants especially in the port city of Chittagong where projects worth billions of taka could not start operation.
The government forecasts the nation's current gas reserves will run out by 2014-2015 at present rate of consumption.
The country's economy has been growing at an average six per cent in the last four years, leading to the gas shortfall, which now stands at around 250mmcf a day.
Petrobangla projected that the country will need a further 24 trillion cubic feet (tcf) of gas and investment worth US $ 7.7 billion in the next 16 years to maintain seven per cent economic growth rate.
The country's proven reserve of 8.39 Tcf gas would start drying up from 2011. If proven and probable reserves of around 14.4 Tcf are taken together, the country's gas stock will be emptied by 2015.