It’s 2022. We’re cooking with firewood.
Sharmin Akhtar goes to bed after 2:30am every night. This is different from her usual routine, as she always went to sleep around 12:00am. But after the gas crisis hit North Shahjahanpur hard a couple of weeks back, there's no way Sharmin can go to sleep early without cooking for the next day.
"We don't have gas all day, from 6:00am all the way till 3:00pm," she told this correspondent yesterday. "And the gas we get from 3:00pm isn't anything to write about. The pressure is so low we can barely cook anything."
Faced with the same crisis, South Shahjahanpur's Badrul Alam Chowdhury has to spend Tk 150 to buy breakfast for the family of four every day. In a bit of double whammy, this is an even graver burden for him given the rising price of daily essentials.
"This is making life very hard," he said. "We just sub-let one of the rooms in our three-bed apartment to help ease the pressure on our wallet."
This is not just the picture in North and South Shahjahanpur, the gas crisis is weighing down across the city. Maniknagar, Rajabazar, Jigatola, Mohakhali, Adabor, Banasree, Mirpur, Pallabi, Gandaria and parts of Old Dhaka are facing the same problem.
The crisis is pushing people to find myriad ways to cook their meals. "We are often using firewood to cook our lunch and dinner," said Babul Shikdar, a resident of Shipahibagh of Khilgaon.
Gandaria's Dipan spoke of spending money to pay bills for the gas line from Titas Gas Transmission and Distribution Company Ltd, while having to buy cylinders in addition. "We haven't had gas in a while. What are we being billed for?" he asked while speaking to this correspondent yesterday.
Contacted, authorities of neither Bangladesh Oil Gas and Mineral Corporation (Petrobangla) nor Titas had anything to good to say for the residents.
They blamed the shortage of Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG ) supply for the crisis, saying it might take until March to be resolved.
"We are getting less LNG as Summit Group's floating storage regasification unit in Bangladesh, one of the country's two LNG importing facilities, has halted LNG imports from the last week of November due to a damaged mooring line," said a Petrobangla official.
"It may not be fixed until February 20," he said.
Even last month, the supply of LNG was 560 mmcfd (million cubic feet per day), which has come down to 420 to 430 mmcfd now, said the official.
The country's gas demand is around 3,700 mmcfd (million cubic feet per day), but we're only getting 2,600 to 2,700 mmcfd, said a Rupantarita Prakritik Gas Company Ltd (RPGCL) official.
The country needs at least another 525 mmcfd of imported LNG to keep the supply normal, he said.
He said during the winter, condensate gets deposited in pipelines and if enough gas is not available at source, the supply gets disrupted.
The official said a fresh mooring line was supposed to be built by mid-January, but it will take at least till February 20 as many workers got Covid-19.
"We are hoping Summit will be able to restart their operation by February 20, which will enable us get another 800 mmcfd LNG gas from March," he said.
He said they are now running oil-based power plants to reduce the dependency on gas.
Since September 19, the government has also started to keep the CNG filling stations closed every day for four hours with the view to provide uninterrupted gas supply, said another official.
Contacted, Managing Director of Titas Md Harunur Rashid Mollah echoed the same, saying an additional problem is that renovation works of a well of Chevron's gas field is also ongoing. He hoped the problem will diminish from February 1.
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