GAS supply to households has increased despite a moratorium on fresh connections that has been in place for about a decade because of gas reserve depletion. Gas supply to industries declined by about 6 per cent in the 2024 financial year, falling from 4,075 million cubic metres to 3,842mmcm. And, the overall loss of Titas Gas Transmission and Distribution Company, which supplies gas to about three million consumers mainly in five zones in Dhaka and Mymensingh, increased by 350 per cent in the 2024 financial year in comparison with the loss the company incurred in the 2023 financial year.

Titas, which supplies gas using a pipeline network spanning 13,391 kilometres, in the 2024 financial year reported Tk 7.44 billion in losses. Titas, however, says that the loss largely resulted from the company having to pay taxes, which has been made mandatory, to the state exchequer. With the tax issue having been set aside, a 2022 government analysis put the system loss at 13 per cent against the official figure of 2 per cent, which experts have always viewed with suspicion. The system loss has almost always been the same, as the general manager of the company’s finance division general manager says. The official seeks to say that it has never been as high as 13 per cent and neither has it ever been as low as 2 per cent.

Titas officials say that the system loss of the company has never been calculated and the figure has been put at 2 per cent in keeping with a decision of the energy ministry. This shows that the company has almost always resorted to the juggling of figures to cover up the theft of gas and the inefficiency of the company management. Energy experts have for long blamed Titas for its corruption, the theft of gas and inefficiency, which they believe are evident in the mismatch of the account of its system loss. The authorities have always sought to explain that the leak of gas sent through rusty and porous pipes were causing a substantial loss of gas every year. An increase by five million cubic metres, which is equivalent to more than 4.1 million tonnes of oil, in the supply of gas to non-metered households with no fresh connection having been offered for about a decade, as experts believe, is reflective of unabated gas theft through illegal connections, which are mostly done with the connivance of Titas officials and employees. The company in the 2023 financial year severed 282,000 illegal connections used by consumers of all categories — industries, households, commercial clients and captive consumers. The managing director of Titas at a hearing that the Energy Regulatory Commission held in March 2022 said that 10 per cent of Titas employees might be dishonest. The situation can be well assumed to have so far persisted as it has not improved.

The government should, therefore, earnestly stop the theft of gas, corruption within the agency and attend to issues of inefficiency to fish Titas Gas Transmission and Distribution Company out of trouble.

News Link: Govt should stop theft, corruption to fish Titas out of trouble