Weather Disruptions Deepen Bangladesh Gas Crisis

Due to unfavourable maritime weather that has seriously hampered the unloading of LNG from cargo ships at the Maheshkhali terminals, Bangladesh is currently facing a serious national gas crisis. The nation’s CNG filling stations, residential homes, and industrial operations have all been severely impacted by this sudden supply disruption, which has resulted in widespread distress and decreased gas line pressure.

The delayed restoration of the US-based Excelerate Energy facility, which was forced to close after a fire incident on July 21, has made the continuing issue much worse. The terminal hasn’t yet reached full capacity, even though it partially resumed operations last Thursday. In the meantime, an LNG cargo ship arrived on Monday, but it was unable to land and release its cargo due to severe weather at sea.

According to Petrobangla officials, the country’s overall gas supply has dropped to less than 220 million cubic feet due to the inability to offload LNG boats. This is a substantial decrease from the typical supply of 270 million cubic feet compared to the daily demand of 3.8 billion cubic feet. Although the Summit terminal had previously increased supplies to lessen a decrease in output as well.

The Excelerate terminal has two boilers with a capacity of 300 million cubic feet. Still, only one of them is operational at the moment while the fire-damaged boiler is being repaired. In order to test the repaired unit, authorities intend to temporarily shut down Excelerate completely for 12 hours over the weekend. Once the weather improves, they hope to return stability to the nation’s energy supply chain.