GBB Power Limited, a publicly traded electricity generation company, shut down its 20MW natural gas-fired power plant on Friday as instructed by the Bangladesh Power Development Board (BPDB).
Following the expiry of the BPDB’s power purchase agreement (PPA) with it, the listed company closed its power plant, as per a disclosure filed with the Dhaka Stock Exchange (DSE) on Sunday.
With this contract expiry, the BPDB has brought an end to a 15-year agreement with the independent electricity generating firm.
As a result, the publicly traded firm has totally become inoperative as it was solely reliant only the 20MW power plant.
Seeking a contract extension, the company, however, applied to the power division on January 11 this year which is under consideration, the company in the DSE disclosure stated.
Authorities of GBB Power said, as the PPA term is over, the plant will remain shut until further instructions from BPDB, or the Ministry of Power, Energy, And Mineral Resources are received for the power supply from the power plant.
The company has been supplying a minimum of 21.03MW of electricity to BPDB’s 33 KV regional grid.
Established in 2006, GBB Power entered a joint venture agreement with Caledonian Power to set up a power plant.
The joint venture entered into a PPA agreement with BPDB for 15 years. This GBB Group subsidiary got listed on the stock market back in 2012.
Several company sources familiar with the matter said GBB Power was trying to get an approval for the construction of some more power plants, but still failed to avail of the nod.
Analysts said the company went public with just a single power plant. As a result, its shares were not very profitable for investors since its listing.
GBB Power shares have been stuck at the floor price of Tk 15.10 each.
The company, in the 2021–22 fiscal year, made a net profit of Tk 10.30 crore and paid a 3 per cent cash dividend to the shareholders.
The power producer posted a net profit of Tk 8.14 crore in the first nine months of the fiscal year 2022-23, down from Tk 8.85 crore crore in the same period last fiscal.
Prices of fuel oil or energy—gas, coal, diesel, or furnace oil—needed at power plants for generating electricity, went up many times in Bangladesh due to the costly dollar since the start of the Russia-Ukraine war.
