Staff Reporter :
Acute gas crisis is seriously affecting cooking in houses in capital Dhaka as well as Chittagong metropolitan city over last few weeks.
Besides, the crisis is also disrupting operations of CNG (compressed natural gas) filling stations and hampering industrial output, sources said
The crisis in many parts of the capital, its surrounding areas and Chittagong city has become so acute that many people are being forced to buy breakfast and lunch as they fail to cook in gas stoves.
The city’s especially housewives are facing serious difficulties to prepare meals for their family members,
as the gas pressure in the pipeline is too low to cook during the usual hours of the morning.
Sharifa Akter, a housewife living in city’s Basabo said she cooks three meals in the middle of the night, and stores them all in the fridge.
“Throughout the day, there is no gas pressure in my oven. The pressure in the pipeline comes after evening or even later,” she told The New Nation on Saturday.
Besides Sharifa Akter, most of residents of the capital Dhaka are facing the same problem. Large parts of Dhaka city are facing a severe gas crisis.
The affected areas are–Lalbagh, Bongshal, Mirpur areas, Khilgaon, Mohammadpur,Taltola, Shyamoli, East Rajabazar, Banasree, Kafrul, Malibagh Mogbazar, NewEskaton and Jatrabari.
The consumers alleged that the Bangladesh Energy Regulatory Commission (BERC) is mulling to hike gas price again but it has not taken any step to ensure adequate supply of gas.
Talking to this reporter, some consumers said that they went to BERC for complaining the matter but nobody was interested to respond in this regard.
Though the demand of gas has been raised among the existing consumers and a good number of illegal gas connections gave by a group of Titas employees since the government ban the gas connection, resulting the present gas crisis, sources said.
According to Titas Gas Transmission and Distribution Company officials, the authorities have awarded gas connections in the urban areas in last few years without any significant rise gas production. This is also a cause of gas crisis. Besides, the number of illegal connections crossed two lakh and those provided were using illegal pipeline, mostly in Dhaka, Narayanganj, Narsingdi and Gazipur, they said.
These illegal connections have been said to be consuming 300 million cubic feet of gas a day, causing several hundred crores of taka worth of losses for the government, daily.
“We receive around 1,450 million cubic feet of gas (mmcfd) a day against the demand of nearly 1,850 mmcfd,” an official of Titas operation cell said not to be named yesterday.
He said gas pipelines in most of the city areas are very old. “If those are repaired and replaced, gas pressure would increase under the existing supply system,” he added. According to Titas officials, Petrobangla, the state-owned oil company, has failed to increase gas supply in line with the ever-growing demand.
The gas shortage similarly hampered industrial production and CNG fueling stations.
Petrobangla was supplied 2672 mmcf gas on December 8 against the demand of 3500 mmcf daily.
