Gas crisis hits household work in Ctg

January 25, 2010

Shahana Akter was in a fix when the gas supply went off on Monday evening. The dinner is only half-cooked, but she has to feed her son and send him to bed as early as possible since he has a class at eight in the morning.

Shahana had to wait till 10:00pm for gas supply to resume and it was midnight when she bade her son goodnight.

And this housewife who resides at Khulshi is not an exception, people in many areas in the port city are having the same experience since low pressure and abrupt outage of gas have been causing serious trouble for over two weeks.

Delwara and Shahinur, residents of the same area, said they have to prepare both the breakfast and the lunch together since the gas pressure starts falling at 11:30am and finally goes off at around 12:30pm.

“The supply resumes at around 3:00pm and goes off again for at least three hours at 6:00pm,” they added.

The gas crisis has forced many to buy kerosene stove to do cooking with additional costs or go for brick-made fuel wood burner.

People at Agrabad, Sugandha Residential Area and Kapashgola also have the complaints.

Sources in Bakharabad Gas Systems Limited (BGSL) blamed the increasing gap between the demand and the supply for the crisis, which they feared to worsen in the summer.

“There is no official suspension of gas supply in the city. It must be the gradual decrease in production against increasing connection and demand that causes poor pressure in supply lines and consequent outage of gas. Besides, fall in temperature also contributes to the poor pressure,” said BGSL Manager (customer maintenance) Md Azam.

“We get some 233 MCF (million cubic feet) gas, including 33 MCF from the offshore gas-field of Sangu, against an increasing demand that by now stands at 350 MCF in Chittagong. Of this, CUFL and Kafco get 48 MCF each while some 57 CNG stations get some 35 MCF. The rest is left for household and commercial use,” he said adding, “Some 35 MCF is needed for household use.”

“The situation would worsen further when we would restore supply to power plants in the upcoming summer,” he observed.

Rationing could check wastage of household gas. But, residential connections could not be separated from commercial connections.

Businessmen, particularly owners of composite factories of knitting sector, strongly protested the idea of gas rationing since it might break the production chain in composite factories having different units located at different places, he said.

BGSL General Manager Ashraf Ali said BGSL gets all the 33 MCF produced by Sangu that once produced around 180 MCF.

BGSL get most of its supply from Bangladesh Gas Fields Company Limited and Gas Transmission Company Limited (GTCL). But, by the time the gas of these two sources reaches Chittagong from a long distance it loses pressure.

“Introduction of a coordinated process of distribution could help improve the situation here,” said Ashraf stressing an alternative to gas.

Ashraf said they have put forward some recommendations and Petrobangla and the authorities concerned are thinking actively to improve the situation.

Meanwhile, sources in BGSL preferring anonymity observed that import of fertiliser instead of producing locally (that require huge quantity of gas) and running captive power plants with diesel might lessen the pressure on gas.

However, any step like rationing or suspending supply to fertiliser factory or captive power plants is sure to spark protest and will have some negative impacts.

So, the matter should be reviewed and discussed thoroughly at the policymaking level to come up with a feasible solution to the crisis, they added.

Gas crisis hits household work in Ctg

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