The human and economic toll of gas leaks

Narayanganj has become a hotbed of gas explosions. According to a report published by The Daily Star on March 21, 2021, a total of 15 villages comprising of 2,000 families are using giant balloons to preserve natural gas for household uses. Two underlying reasons related to our energy sector are acting as the driving forces behind this dangerous practice—the shortage in the gas supply during daytime and the inability of the people to report to the respective authorities due to the illegal nature of their gas connections. These balloons have two leakage points, both of which are in the tubes that connect them with the gas pipelines and cooking stoves respectively. These balloons contain the inflammatory methane gas and pose high risks of suddenly bursting, which can in turn cause loss of valuable human lives. A few weeks ago, two members of a family, including a 12-year-old boy, died from a gas blast on March 9, while a total of 34 people had died from the same kind of tragedy while performing prayers at a local mosque on September 4, 2020. In both cases, the reason was similar—explosion created from gas leakage.

Three of the largest gas providers in our country are—Titas Gas Transmission and Distribution Company Limited, Karnaphuli Gas Distribution Company Limited and Jalalabad Gas Transmission and Distribution System Limited. They are jointly responsible for supplying gas connections to Dhaka, Chattogram and Sylhet regions. A report by Prothom Alo, on March 5, unearthed that most of the gas pipelines of Titas, Karnaphuli and Jalalabad are at least 30 years old. More than 500 leakages occur in Dhaka alone each month, and most of these leakages take place in a single part of the gas distribution line—the risers.

Riser is the connecting point which is set up at the opening of a gas pipeline, to bring buried natural gas piping above the ground to allow access to the gas flowing through the pipes. As the Prothom Alo report mentioned, most of these risers are situated either inside households or within storerooms of business entities, where blasts can happen through the accumulation of gas coming out of leakages. Most concerning is the fact that Titas has found a total of 1,622 leakages in its 12,514 kilometres-long gas distribution line surrounding Dhaka and its nearby areas. This means that we are almost living over a live volcano and an eruption can happen anytime and anywhere around us.

The same report gives an idea of the number of fire incidents originating from gas leakages—204 in the year 2018-19, which has increased to 306 in 2019-20. The yearly number of gas leakage related complaints received by Titas is currently 4,496. Within the January 2017 to January 2018 period, Titas had found leakages in a total of 35,101 risers of residential complexes.

The Financial Express on February, 2019 had pointed out that there were around one million illegal gas lines around the country, which causes great financial distress for the government in the form of "system loss". According to a research project carried out by the Implementation Monitoring and Evaluation Division (IMED) of the Planning Ministry, the current rate of system loss by Titas is at 6 percent. In another report published on June 28, 2018, Consumer Association of Bangladesh (CAB) had calculated that if Titas could perform only two percent reduction in its overall system loss, the government would be saving Tk 256 crores. This means that Titas can save at least Tk 700 crore on a monthly basis if it can sever all its illegal connections. The report had also talked about fund misappropriation and gas transmission strategy in our gas sector, which were eating up Tk 13,000 crore and Tk 5,467 crore respectively from the government's coffer during that time.

Despite being the country's biggest gas transmission and distribution company with 60 percent share of gas connections, Titas does not have any mechanism to identify any leakage from its vast network of underground pipelines. This government-owned company takes action only after getting complaints from their customers, most of which are failing to have an impact on our energy sector. More frustrating is the tendency to shift blame onto others by the high-ups of the organisation. A report published in The Daily Star on October 5, 2020 quoted the managing director of Titas who blamed other urban service providers, like the two city corporations and WASA, for damaging and cracking its underground pipelines while conducting their routine activities. Meanwhile, the report quoted the director (operation) of the same organisation who blamed the Metro Rail project for causing gas leaks in their transmission area.

The Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) had found a total of 22 sources of corruption inside Titas in its report that was published on April 17, 2019. The report had mentioned illegal connections, meter tampering and system loss as the primary reasons for graft at Titas. ACC had also analysed both the 2013-14 and 2015-16 audit reports of the aforementioned company and found that to get an illegal gas connection, one only has to pay Tk 45,000 to a Titas official. Also, while Titas had claimed that the annual amount of gas supplied to households was around 103 billion cubic foot during 2015-16 period, only 88 billion cubic foot had been used. Around 15 billion cubic foot of natural gas remained unused, the monetary value of which is almost Tk 293 crore. ACC blamed Titas officials for the misappropriation of this huge sum of money.

In 2015, the government created the "Energy Efficiency and Conservation Master Plan up to 2030" with a view to saving 15 percent of our energy resources by 2020 and 20 percent of our energy resources by 2030. Though the plan is quite elaborate in its vision to maximise the government's economic gains regarding natural gas, it does not mention the risk of accidental deaths due to sudden gas explosions and thus was totally indifferent towards protecting the country's most significant asset, which is human lives. The same apathy can be found in the words of the state minister for the Ministry of Power, Energy and Mineral Resources. When asked about the health hazards posed by the unpredictable gas explosions by a Prothom Alo journalist, he swiftly avoided the question and gave a contrary reply saying that, "Gas reserves are wasted through providing connections to unplanned industrial and residential complexes. We cannot deny that there are leakages in every distribution line. Work has not been done on these lines for a very long time".

Replacing dated gas distribution lines with new, updated ones and also, taking the dangerous gas risers out of congested, sealed places, can be good starting points for our concerned authorities to prevent the loss of human lives. Also, ACC had submitted its findings to the Ministry of Power, Energy and Mineral Resources and had suggested a 12-point plan to deal with the anomalies in the energy sector. Taking necessary steps to bring the corrupt Titas officials to book and thus, saving peoples' hard-earned money from being siphoned away is another aspect of our energy sector that the government must pay attention to, if it truly wants to prevent the waste of a scarce resource such as natural gas.

Muhammad A Bashed is a member of the editorial team at The Daily Star.