To improve the pressure of natural gas supply in one part of the national grid, US oil company Chevron is finally launching the operation of a gas compressor station at Muchai on April 30.
Though this launching came many months behind schedule, the compressor station costing $52.7 million is expected to increase gas supply by 50 million cubic feet per day (mmcfd)which is a small but significant addition to the country's poor gas supply scenario.
Chevron was awarded the contract under its Production Sharing Contract (PSC) for Block 12 which has the Jalalabad gas field, implying that the cost of the compressor station will be recovered from the sales proceeds of this block.
Chevron installed the station on the gas pipeline system belonging to the Gas Transmission Company Ltd (GTCL) of the government. Back in 2009, the then Petrobangla chairman stirred a lot of controversy to award the contract to Chevron to set up a station by cancelling GTCL's tender to Korean company Hyundai for awarding three stations in the country.
Petrobangla sources said that if the GTCL tender was not cancelled, all the three compressor stations would have been installed by now and the gas pressure and flow would have been much better.
Many power plants of the country are either sitting idle or producing below capacity due to lack of gas supply.
The government signed a contract with the Korean company, Hyundai in October last year to set up the remaining two compressors in Ashuganj and Elenga at a cost of $122 million funded by the Asian Development Bank (ADB). Hyundai expects to launch the stations by July 2013.
Once completed, these three compressors would ensure a country wide steady gas flow and prevent supply fluctuations that have been affecting power generation, industrial production or even domestic burners.