Rough weather and lack of visibility have been cited by authorities as reasons obstructing the resumption of operation of the FSRU, compelling authorities to send back six cargoes of liquefied natural gas worth about Tk 3,000 crore. Petrobangla said on Sunday that they could not give a timeline for the FSRU to resume an operation.

‘The sea water is so turbid that lowered the visibility under water beyond tolerable limit,’ said Kamruzzaman Khan, director, Petrobangla.The FSRU that is out of operation now took about a month to be repaired from Singapore after cyclone Remal struck Bangladesh between May 24 and 28. The FSRU returned after repair about a month ago. Petrobangla officials said that bringing back to operation the FSRU required diving deep into the ocean which could not be done. Bangladesh Meteorological Department warned that monsoon would remain active over the Bay of Bengal until the last week of August, implying that the underwater visibility is set to remain poor the rest of the month. Bangladesh has the capacity to import 1,100mmcfd of LNG through two FSRUs. The non-operation of the FSRU means 660mmcfd of less gas supply. Industrialists and residents have been complaining for a long time now about an unprecedented gas crisis. Many industrialists started buying LPG to deal with the crisis. The piped gas supply to residences remain completely absent during the day in many areas. Many areas suffer so low pressure in the piped gas supply that it cannot be used for cooking.

On Sunday, the Petrobangla said that the gas supply stood at 2635.2mmcfd against the demand of 4,000mmcfd. The power sector received only 40 per cent of what it needed to operate in full capacity. The fertiliser sector received 156.9mmcfd of gas against the demand of 329mmcfd. Despite low power demand because of intermittent showers, Bangladesh, with an installed capacity of over 28,000MW, struggled to supply about 12,000MW of electricity on Sunday. Load shedding peaked at 376MW at 1:00am on Sunday. Energy expert Badrul Imam was surprised to learn about the failure to restore the affected FSRU after so long. ‘The procedure should not be too complicated and expert teams doing the job should be very easily accessible,’ he said. ‘The inability to reconnect the FSRU to the grid highlights the scale of inefficiency we are dealing with in the energy sector,’ he said.

Bangladesh is in a rather uncertain situation since an interim government assumed power on August 8 after Sheikh Hasina fled after resigning in the wake of a mass uprising on August 5. The interim government took over in a critical situation amidst the worst economic crisis in decades sweeping over the country for about two years. Energy experts blamed draining of the dollar reserve by means of import, especially as energy import, for one of the main reasons for creating the crisis.

Bangladesh imports LNG from both spot market and under long-term contracts which account for three fourths of LNG import. Petrobangla officials said that under the import contract the government would have to pay for the six cargoes that were returned. The supply contract, however, allows Bangladesh to claim back the supply that has been paid for when the FSRU will be restored. There, however, is the provision of fines for failing to receive supply in time, said the Petrobangla officials.

News Link: FSRU repair delay prolongs acute gas crisis