LNG terminal overhaul long deferred at risk

US firm Excelerate Energy has deferred twice scheduled overhaul of its floating storage and regasification unit (FSRU) at government request to ensure gas supply amid summer crunch, prompting experts to ring alarm.
The deferment - first from April to June and then from June to September, making a total of five months - was made in view of the mounting energy demand amid heat waves when temperatures rose as high as 41 degrees Celsius, a senior Petrobangla official told the FE on Monday.
Petrobangla had first requested the US company to postpone its FSRU revamp to June. However, the prolonged heat waves alongside primary energy scarcity and resultant severe load-shedding since late May prompted the Petrobangla to request again for deferring the overhauling, said the official.
Many of the country's coal-and fuel oil-based power plants are still running at much less than their respective capacity for fuel shortages, says spokesperson for the state-run Bangladesh Power Development Board (BPDB) Shamim Hossain.
Bangladesh regasified LNG as high as 980 million cubic feet per day (mmcfd) in its two FSRUs after Cyclone Mocha, and currently the volume is hovering around 850mmcfd, as on June 25, according to official data.
Petrobangla feared that the overhauling of the country's first FSRU belonging to the Excelerate during this summer would intensify energy crisis, said the official.
Overall temperatures in Bangladesh will fall and so will the energy demand during September and onwards with the advent of spring and subsequent winter season, Petrobangla predicts.
Since the initiation of commercial operation on 19 August 2018, the US FSRU never went for overhauling, said officials.
The LNG-import terminal, however, went out of operation for a brief period during the Cyclone Mocha along with the remaining operational FSRU of Summit Group.
The FSRUs were taken offline on May 12 as a precautionary measure to avoid any damage from the cyclonic storm.
The Excellence was moved further out to sea to avoid the full impact of the cyclone, came online on May 20 after an eight-day hiatus following its departure to deep sea, after the de-plugging of mooring to prepare for Cyclone Mocha.
Bangladesh had to witness energy shortages coupled with frequent power outages and Petrobangla had to ration gas supplies to industries and power plants and the BPDB had to rely more on oil-fired power plants to cope with the gas crisis.
Similarly, although to a somewhat lesser extent, Bangladesh also had to undergo an acute gas crisis affecting operations of gas-guzzling power plants, industries, and CNG filling stations when Summit Group's FSRU went out of operation for three months from November 2021 due to the rupture of its mooring line from the mooring system in the Bay of Bengal.
Petrobangla had to use only one FSRU for LNG re-gasification and its capacity halved as a consequence.
Excelerate Energy's FSRU had to re-gasify 10 per cent more than its official capacity to 550mmcfd then to cope with the short supply of natural gas, according to the official data.
Summit's FSRU resumed LNG re-gasification on February 28, 2022 to get back to normal, after the hiccups.
Experts ring the alarm bell over the deferments of the Excelerate terminal renovation. The government is taking risk by deferring the scheduled overhauling of the FSRU to ensure supply of natural gas to industries, power plants and other gas-guzzling consumers, says energy-expert Prof M Tamim of Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET).
"If the FSRU faces any sort of technical difficulty due to its continuous operation without overhauling, the government will have to pay the price," he says on a note of forewarning.
The entire energy-supply situation will also be at stake, adds Mr Tamim, who was a special assistant to the chief of previous caretaker government.