News Desk :
Speakers at a discussion meeting on the country’s ‘gas crisis’ -dwindling reserves met with increasingly expensive imports – trashed a proposed price hike sent to the energy regulator by the state-owned gas distribution companies for drawing on erroneous assessment.
“The proposal to hike the gas price by 117 percent is abnormally high, and cannot be acceptable to justify only 5 percent import of gas at higher price from the spot market” said Mizanur Rahman, a former member of the Bangladesh Energy Regulatory Commission while discussing the issue.
Energy and Power, a fortnightly publication on arguably the most vital sector of the economy for any developing nation, organised the virtual discussionSaturday on “Gas Crisis & Price Hike Move, Challenges of Industrial Sector ” with its editor Mollah Amzad Hossain as moderator, reports UNB.
The seminar was also addressed by the eminent economist and executive director of the Policy Research Institute Dr Ahsan H Mandur, energy expert Dr Ijaz Hossain, former president of Dhaka Chamber of Commerce and Industry Abul Kasem Khan, FBCCI Standing Committee on Power and Energy Chairman Humayun Rashid and chairman of Forum for Energy Reporters Bangladesh (FERB) Arun Karmaker.
BERC recently rejected a proposal put together by a number of state-owned gas distribution companies to raise the gas price by 117 percent in accordance with the energy division’s instruction.
According to gas industry insiders, of the country’s total gas consumption, 78 percent is still locally produced from the country’s own reserves, while 17 percent is imported on G2G (government to government) contracts that have a long-term price locked in.static price while only 5 percent is imported from a volatile spot market.
