Govt to buy more LNG from spot market

The government yesterday approved a proposal to buy another 33.60 lakh MMBtus of liquefied natural gas (LNG) from the spot market to meet the growing demand for the super-chilled fuel.

Vitol Asia Pte of Singapore will supply the fuel. Each MMBtu (Metric Million British thermal units) will cost $8.012.

The cabinet committee on purchase yesterday approved the proposal submitted by Petrobangla, a corporation of the energy and mineral resources division, to make the purchase at Tk 267.57 crore.

This is the sixth time the government would buy the fuel from the spot market.

With this, the government has so far approved the purchase of a total of 270.10 lakh MMBtus of LNG from the sport market from three firms.

In September last year, the government moved to the spot market for the first time to purchase the fuel at a cheaper rate. At that time, the Vitol won the work order to deliver 3,490,200 MMBtus for Tk 132.93 crore.

The government on February 17 this year approved two proposals over purchasing 67.2 lakh MMBtus of LNG from Vitol Asia Pte for Tk 623 crore.

Under one proposal, each MMBtu would cost $9.31 while it is $9.36 in another.

On March 10, the government approved two more proposals to purchase 67.2 lakh MMBtus of LNG for Tk 527.24 crore from the Vitol and AOT Trading AG of Switzerland.

Each MMBtu was priced at $7.44 and $8.345 respectively.

On March 24, the purchase committee approved a proposal to purchase 33.6 lakh MMBtus of LNG from US firm Excelerate Energy LP at a cost of Tk 218.07 crore. Each MMBtu cost $6.53.

On April 7, it approved the purchase of 33.60 lakh MMBtus of LNG from AOT Trading AG, Switzerland at a cost of Tk 243.30 crore. Each MMBtu was priced at $7.28.

Meanwhile, Qatar Petroleum has signed a long-term deal with Vitol to supply 1.25 million tonnes of LNG to Bangladesh per year. Bangladesh has two floating storage and regasification units (FSRUs).

Excelerate Energy began supplying regasified LNG from its Moheshkhali terminal in August 2017. It has a regasification capacity of 500 million cubic feet of LNG per day.

Summit LNG Terminal Co, which runs the country's second LNG terminal, began supplying regasified LNG in May 2019. The unit has a capacity to regasify 500 million cubic feet of LNG daily.

Finance Minister on New Poverty Survey

Finance Minister AHM Mustafa Kamal yesterday said the government would prefer considering assessments of the Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics (BBS) over the number of new people pushed into poverty by the pandemic.

But it will not accept information from any private organisation, he added.

He said this in response to a query about a new survey jointly conducted by the Power and Participation Research Centre and the Brac Institute of Governance and Development.

The survey found that the economic shock induced by the pandemic has pushed 2.45 crore people into poverty in one year.

Kamal was addressing a virtual press briefing following the cabinet committee meeting.

"If any organisation publishes any survey report, that will be assessed by the BBS and we will only consider the assessment of the BBS," he said.

No such assessment has been done yet, he added.

Mentioning that the government is working with the aim of lifting people out of poverty, Kamal said the upcoming national budget would focus on financially insolvent people and they would get priority.