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22mcf gas to add to nat’l grid per day


Published : 11 May 2021 10:00 PM | Updated : 12 May 2021 12:55 AM

An average of 11 million cubic feet (mmcfd) of gas per day has been supplied to the national grid from the exploration well at Srikail East-1 in Brahmanbaria. 

The state-owned Bangladesh Petroleum Exploration and Production Company Limited (Bapex) started supplying the amount of gas on experiment basis from Monday. Earlier, 11 million cubic feet of gas was added to the grid from Fenchuganj on May 4.

Energy Division official said the total gas reserve in the Srikail East-1 field is around 71 billion cubic feet (bcf) and around 45 billion cubic feet of gas reserve is there in one of the Fenchuganj wells. Currently Bapex is producing 125-130 million cubic feet of gas per day from the well. 

State Minister for Power, Energy and Mineral Resources Nasrul Hamid said, “The scope of the area of Bapex's work is being expanded. Our efforts are continuing to turn Bapex into an international gas exploration, extraction and production company.”

“Bapex undertakes production and excavation related activities and workover activities, rig schedule, exploration (geophysical and geological) activities, modernization of organizational structure of its manpower and all other projects has taken orders for future plans. The government is working to increase the capacity,” he added. 

Bangladesh Oil, Gas and Mineral Corporation, shortly Petrobangla, has been struggling to meet increasing demand of gas.

Currently, the country-wide demand of gas is 3,700 million cubic feet a day, while the supply is 3,000 to 3,100 million cubic feet during normal condition. Of these, a maximum of 2,700 million cubic feet of gas is being produced from 27 wells. Rest amount of gas is being imported as LNG, Petrobangla officials said.

Against the backdrop of an ever-increasing gas demand, the government decided to import LNG in 2010 to meet the country’s dire energy deficit and finally the LNG import was started from 2018.

Of the two operational Floating Storage Regasification Unit (FSRU), US-based LNG Company Excelerate Energy started supplying regasified LNG commercially on August 18, 2018 and local Summit Group on April 29, 2019.

Each of the FSRUs has a capacity to regasify around 500 million cubic feet per day (mmcfd) of LNG. However, average 6,00 mmcfd, out of the total 1,000 mmcfd LNG is being supplied due to limitations in pipe line.