Gas supply to bulk users reduced in Ctg

Apart from stopping gas supply to Chittagong Urea Fertilizer Company CUFL, one of the major gas users in the Chattogram region, Karnaphuli Gas Distribution Company Limited (KGDCL) is reducing gas supply to the major industrial users.

KGDCL said besides cutting off 36 million cubic feet (MMCFD) of gas supply to CUFL, gas supply to several private industries and power plants, including Karnphuli Fertilizer Company (KAFCO), a Japanese joint venture, has been curtailed.

Eng Md Sarwar Hossain, General Manager of the Engineering Services Division of (KGDCL), says, since the beginning of July this gas supply has decreased and the major users have no choice but to reduce the supply.

The daily demand for gas in Chattogram is 315 million cubic feet but now about 270 million cubic feet is available. The gas is being supplied to the national grid after the shutdown of supply to CUFL, he said.

According to the KGDCL sources, the gas supply to KAFCO, another fertilizer factory in Chattogram, has also been reduced.

The plant requires 51 million cubic feet of gas per day but currently it is getting 43 million cubic feet. On the other hand, supply to some large industrial establishments including a private power plant has been reduced by at least 6 million cubic feet.

Even if the gas supply to CUFL is stopped, this factory still needs five million cubic feet of gas to keep running some sub-sectors of the factory. The demand in this factory is 41 million cubic feet from which 36 million cubic feet of supply has been reduced.

At present, 29 million cubic feet of gas is supplied to one unit of Rawjan Thermal Power Plant in Chattogram for power generation.

A source in KGDCL says the government is giving priority to gas supply to power plants and hence gas supply to Rawjan power plant has not been curtailed despite the crisis. Apart from this, some small-scale private power plants are also being supplied with gas but their supply has been reduced compared to earlier.

Before Mid June, 750 million cubic meters of gas were regularly available from the Floating Storage Re-gasification Unit (FSRU) near Maheshkhali Island in the Bay of Bengal.

But due to unusual increase in the price of gas in the world market, the import of gas from the spot market has been stopped. As a result, the supply of imported gas has dropped from FSRU by 500 million cubic feet per day.

In the private sector, most of the large-scale gas users in Chattogram areas are in the steel sector. Many fear that their production cost will increase due to the gas supply shortage. Tapan Sen Gupta, Deputy Managing Director of BSRM, a top steel producer in the country, said gas pressure in the supply lines of our plant has decreased.

“As an alternative, we have to use furnace oil, which is relatively expensive and increases production cost,” he said.