Gas exploration is the best option to overcome energy crisis
Bangladesh’s energy crisis nears a point of no return, with its domestic gas production set to halve soon against a rapidly growing demand for fossil fuels amid the continued expansion of gas-based power generation capacity.
By 2026, gas-based power generation capacity will increase by 40 per cent or 4,475MW from the current capacity of 11,017MW, roughly half of which can be presently used due to a lack of fuel.
On November 1, the daily gas report released by Petrobangla, the state-owned oil company, showed that the overall supply of gas on the day stood at 2,592mmcfd, about 80 per cent coming from domestic gas fields.
The gas reserve at Bibiyana, managed by the US multinational oil company Chevron, dropped to 333.44bcf on December 31, 2022. Bibiyana saw its reserves drop by 56 per cent in just a year since December 2021 and 91 per cent since December 2014.
The supplier’s attempt to prolong its life by digging fresh wells, if successful, could add a maximum of two more years.
The acute energy crisis has already prompted the official introduction of hours of power outages daily in July 2022.
But the government continued to invest in gas-based infrastructure, such as building more power plants.
Bangladesh is building 4,500MW of gas-based power plants, which are set to come online by 2026, though half of the country’s current installed capacity of 25,339 remains idle.
A further increase in idle power capacity, with capacity charge entitlement, means even worse dollar and economic crises.
Bangladesh could have avoided the crisis with two measures- exploring its own gas resources and increasing production in domestic wells.
Experts said that the incumbent government had largely ignored their calls to explore its own resources since assuming office in 2009 and instead built a massive power generation capacity based on imported fossil fuels-gas and coal.
Bangladesh’s spending of Tk 45,000 crore between 2018 and 2021 importing gas is believed to be a significant source of the dollar crisis.
Bangladesh recently approved the import of a thousand cubic feet of gas from the spot market at more than $15 per, implying the cost of 1mmcfd of gas to be $15,000.
The government, whoever is in power, should invest in exploring gas and other minerals and invest in green energy, as without uninterrupted power supply the nation cannot thrive.
