Energy and Mineral Resources division wants to keep the country’s CNG station closed for an additional two more hours due to reduced supply of gas.
Bangladesh Oil, Gas and Mineral Corporation (Petrobangla) has made a proposal to the gas filling station owners regarding the issue. However, the owners’ association did not accept this proposal.
Currently CNG stations are closed for five hours from 6 pm to 11 pm. If extended by another two hours, the stations will be closed for a total of seven hours every day.
In this regards, a meeting was held between Petrobangla and Bangladesh CNG Filling Station and Conversion Workshop Owners Association on Tuesday.
Petrobangla proposed there to keep the station closed for another two hours every day to increase the supply of gas during the peak hours of electricity production in power plants. But the owners denied and said if rationing is extended for another two hours in the current situation, there will be no business.
Earlier the government on March decided to extend the suspension of gas supply to CNG filling stations across the country for another hour. Currently, the CNG filling stations are remaining closed from 6pm to 11pm everyday instead of the previous schedule of 6-10pm.
When contacted, Farhan Noor, President of Bangladesh CNG Filling Station and Conversion Workshop Owners Association told Bangladesh Post, “Petrobangla called us to discuss about the gas shortage and wanted to keep the CNG station closed for additional two more hours. But we rejected the idea due to our present crisis in business. However, the government can implement this decision if it wants. However, if Petrobangla implements it, then the station owners will be huge losers.
The suffering of people will also increase. Besides, pressure on petrol and octane will increase, which will pollute of environment.”
“Currently we cannot sell gas for 6-7 hours due to load shedding of electricity. Now they have proposed to keep the stations shuts for another 2 hours. This means that gas supply is off for about 11-12 hours every day. Also it takes time to get gas due to low pressure. Apart from this, it takes a lot of time to supply gas due to low gas pressure,” he added.
He also said that currently CNG stations use only three percent of the total gas supplied and paying the maximum price. Increasing the supply of gas will not affect the country’s gas crisis.
In September last year, the government had directed the CNG pumps owners to keep their pumps shut for 4 hours from 6pm to 10pm every day until further order.
The government had promised to the CNG filling station owners to resume full-scale gas supply from January this year but later the decision was changed.
There are over 500 CNG filling stations operating in the country. About one million vehicles are running with CNG.