The New Nation - Internet Edition

Staff Reporter

Major parts of the country will plunge into darkness as the Petrobangla has begun cutting gas supplies to old and worn-out electricity generation plants to ensure more efficient use of gas, officials said yesterday. They said the decision to put fast depleting gas to better use was taken by the government two days ago, with implementation starting on Sunday.

"Gas supply to a state-run power plant near Dhaka with more than 100 megawatts capacity has already been stopped and the process will continue," said Jalal Ahmed, chairman of the state-run Petrobangla.

"So far we have identified 19 units which are very old and gas supplies to these will be snapped gradually to divert the gas to relatively new and efficient power plants," he said.

The country faces shortages of 250 million cubic feet of gas and up to 1,500 megawatts electricity everyday and the gap between demand and supply is rising, M Tamim, Special Assistant for the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources, said on Saturday when unveiling the new policy.

Around 30 per cent of the country's more than 14 crore population have access to electricity, mostly in urban areas.

But the government recently decided not to supply gas, a major raw material for producing electricity, to new industrial ventures as the country's proven reserves of natural gas were dwindling fast, Petrobangla officials said.

Bangladesh has more than 100 power producing units with nearly 5,300 megawatt of capacity. But they barely produce 4,300 megawatt as almost one-third of the units are very old, the officials said. Some plants are up to 40 years old and their generating capacity has declined by up to 50 percent, they said.

An official of the Bangladesh Power Development Board (PDB) said delinking gas supplies to the ageing power plants would help divert the gas to more efficient units.

This will boost production by 50 percent in some plants, which currently produce 200 megawatts each, the official said.

Other officials, however, said the move might deepen the power crisis across the country, leaving more people in dark and causing voltage problems in areas still having electricity.

Due to the gas crisis, nearly 600 manufacturing industrial units in the port city of Chittagong have become almost inoperative and the government has ordered a two-year freeze of new gas connections in and around Chittagong city.