Oct 10, 2025
| Asifur Rahman | The Daily Star
The country's overall gas supply dropped further last fiscal year, despite higher LNG imports, due to a continued decline in domestic production.
The country requires around 3,800 million cubic feet of gas per day (mmcfd) to stabilise the power supply and feed factories and industries. In fiscal 2024-25, the average daily gas distribution stood at 2,526 million cubic feet of gas a day (mmcfd), down from 2,715 mmcfd the previous year.
While the government's expenditure for importing liquefied natural gas in fiscal 2024-25 stood at Tk 54,954 crore, up 28.9 percent year-on-year. To import the high amount of LNG, the government had to provide more subsidies: about Tk 8,900 crore was expended on subsidies last fiscal year, up from Tk 6,000 crore in fiscal 2023-24.
On the other hand, domestic production has been decreasing constantly since 2018, the year the country started importing LNG. Since then, the volume of LNG imports has been increasing in every fiscal year, accounting for 30 percent of the gas supply.
"It was a bad precedent that the then governments moved for an import-driven gas supply strategy," said M Shamsul Alam, energy adviser to the Consumers' Association of Bangladesh.
Amid the rising concerns from experts and activists, the then-government in 2022 had announced a three-year-plan to drill 50 wells by 2025 to add around 648 mmcfd of gas from local sources. Until the changeover in government in August 2024, the number of completed drills was only seven, which now stands at 19. The authorities have been able to connect only 82 mmcfd of gas from the sources to the national gas grid so far. In January 2024, another plan to drill another 100 gas wells was announced.
Concerned officials from Petrobangla said the interim government accelerated the implementation of the projects by initiating the drilling of at least 41 wells under 15 projects. From the second plan, which aims to ensure more than 1,300 mmcfd gas supply by 2028, the development project proposals are being readied to drill 19 wells under six separate projects, the officials said. The ousted government went on offshore drilling in 2024 for the first time after 2012.
In March last year, Bangladesh's offshore bidding round was announced for global oil companies and the deadline for bidding was in September. In between, the political changeover happened, and none of the participants placed bids. The interim government extended the deadline for three months but failed to attract the bidders.
"The interim government just did business-as-usual duties in the energy sector," said Badrul Imam, honorary professor of geology at the University of Dhaka. They had a chance to go for rigorous drilling to increase local gas supply, which they failed, he said. "We didn't find any special attention or encouragement among the officials in this regard," he said, adding that there should be a special arrangement for exploration activities amid the continuous fall in local supply.
Those who worked in favour of imports during the previous government are still in place, Alam said. "They have turned the energy sector into an import-driven market. The decisions were dangerous, and the same trend is continuing. What the previous government did to push the energy sector into a fragile state is being continued, with pricing mechanisms now moving further towards dependence on international markets," he added.
Petrobangla officials said they have prepared the fresh documents and sent it to the ministry for further approvals. "But it seems that the interim government will leave it for the elected one," said an official asking not to be named.