Bangladesh gas crisis may take up to 15 more days to ease

Bangladesh’s gas crisis may take another 10 to 15 days to ease as repairs continue at a fire-damaged liquefied natural gas facility, energy minister Iqbal Hassan Mahmood said Monday.

Mahmood said the disruption prevented two liquefied natural gas cargoes from being unloaded, reducing supplies to households and power plants. A July 21 fire damaged power, control and instrumentation cables at the Excelerate Energy facility in Moheshkhali.

Bangladesh operates two floating storage and regasification units there to process imported gas.

Mahmood said declining domestic production had increased Bangladesh’s dependence on imported fuel. The country spent about $3.65 billion on fuel imports over six months.

He said the government also inherited Tk 56,000 crore, approximately $4.52 billion, in unpaid obligations to private power producers. Bangladesh plans to add 10,000 megawatts of renewable capacity within five years.