Dhaka families turn to electric cooking
A technical fault at the Maheshkhali floating LNG terminal has cut gas supply by around 450 million cubic feet per day, leaving large parts of Dhaka with little or no pressure for most of the day and forcing households to rely on electric cookers or restaurant food.
A survey of several neighborhoods on Wednesday — including Mirpur, Mohammadpur, Shyamoli, Adabar, Dhanmondi, Kalabagan, Hazaribagh, Rampura, Badda, Khilgaon, Basabo, Malibagh, Uttara and areas of Old Dhaka — found the same pattern repeating: gas pressure all but disappears except in the early morning or late at night. Where flames do appear, cooking a single dish can take two to three hours instead of one.
“I can’t prepare breakfast before sending the children to school in the morning,” said Parvin Akter, a homemaker in Mohammadpur. “The flame is so weak that even boiling an egg takes forever. We’ve had to start using an electric heater, and that’s pushed up our electricity bill.”
Tanvin Akhtar Tonu, a resident of Mirpur, said cooking lunch or dinner has become nearly impossible over the past several days. “We’ve had to buy food from restaurants for the family again and again. Our monthly expenses have gone up a lot because of it,” she said.
The shortage is not confined to households. CNG filling stations across Dhaka are also reporting low pressure, with several forced to suspend operations temporarily. Drivers have been left waiting in long queues without fuel, cutting into their daily earnings.
Energy sector officials say the disruption stems from a drop in gas supply to the national grid, affecting residential, industrial and CNG consumers alike, and that low pressure could persist until the situation improves.
Affected customers are demanding an urgent restoration of normal supply, saying the absence of a lasting fix has disrupted daily life for days on end — with working families and households with children bearing the brunt. The shift to electric cooking, they note, is not only raising costs but adding further strain to the power grid.
In a notice issued Tuesday, state-run gas distributor Titas Gas said a technical fault had cut supply of regasified LNG (RLNG) from the floating terminal in Maheshkhali by roughly 450 million cubic feet per day (MMCFD). As a result, it said, severe low pressure would continue for all categories of customers in areas under its coverage until the situation is resolved.
Energy, Power and Mineral Resources Minister Iqbal Hasan Mahmud said Monday that normalizing the crisis could take another 10 to 15 days.
Speaking at a roundtable organized by the Bangladesh Institute of Peace and Security Studies (BIPSS) at a city hotel, the minister said a fire at a floating storage and regasification unit (FSRU) had disrupted LNG unloading, causing a major disruption to the country’s gas supply and pushing the crisis to a critical level.
Repair work on the damaged FSRU is under way, the minister said, but cargo unloading cannot resume until it is complete — a delay that has cut gas pressure for cooking nationwide and created difficulties in running gas-fired power plants.
Prime Minister pledges action on industrial gas shortage
Prime Minister Tareq Rahman has assured the industrial sector that steps will be taken to address the ongoing gas crisis. He has directed relevant authorities to resolve the sector’s problems swiftly and to reach effective decisions in consultation with all stakeholders.
The matter was discussed Wednesday at the first meeting of a high-level inter-ministerial committee formed to address problems in the textile industry, held at the Prime Minister’s Office in the Secretariat.
The Prime Minister joined the meeting partway through, heard remarks from participants, and called for quick decisions on resolving the issues. He instructed that a follow-up meeting be organized at his office within a week to continue talks with all stakeholders.
Committee members present included Commerce Minister Khandaker Abdul Muktadir; the Prime Minister’s Adviser on Finance and Planning, Dr. Rashed Al Mahmud Titumir; Bangladesh Bank Governor Md. Mostakur Rahman; and NBR Acting Chairman Ahsan Habib.
The committee was formed after a delegation led by the president of the Bangladesh Textile Mills Association (BTMA) met the Prime Minister at his office on July 22 to raise concerns about the industry’s problems. At that meeting, the Prime Minister ordered the formation of the high-level inter-ministerial committee to draft proposals for resolving the issues, leading to Wednesday’s first session.
Opening the meeting, the Commerce Minister said the Prime Minister was fully aware of the textile sector’s difficulties and was sincerely committed to resolving them — which is why he had formed the high-level inter-ministerial committee to immediately draft proposals for addressing the outstanding problems.
