THE New Nation reported on Friday that the government is planning to switch at least 70 percent of households to Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) use from piped gas supply within the next three years. LPG is already used in rural households for cooking and the new change is likely to affect the urban users. It is not a secret that the country is running out of gas reserves severely affecting industrial production, expansion and exports. Many investors are waiting for gas connection to take their newly set up plants to production but growing gas shortage left them on waiting for the past several years in many cases. The manufacturing sector in Bangladesh expanded quickly in late 1990s and early 2000s mainly based on cheaper gas supply and low labour cost. But gas shortage is causing the biggest setback to industrial expansion in recent years and this in turn is slowing down investments, job creation and income generation for new workforce entering the market every year. Though the State Minister for Energy did not agree that the government is working to slowly withdraw gas from households for industrial use, the new tendency also does not rule out such reprioritizing. Many believe natural gas can’t be misused at low cost in the households when it has greater value for industrial use. But others believe households can’t be discriminated either. They also believe the setting up of hundreds of kilometers of gas pipelines in the cities was a wrong decision in view of the fact that residents in many big cities use LPG for households and these pipelines may prove waste at the end. What appears to be painstaking to many is that cheaper exports like garments from cheaper gas will benefit foreign buyers. But LPG users in every households will have to pay at least four times higher of the present gas bills because of higher import price of LPG and its marketing costs. It appears that LPG use is set to grow faster now as an alternative to natural gas for residential users. The State Minister has rightly pointed out that changes in energy use are coming and people must be ready to readjust life style. The fear is that gas reserves may dry out in a decade if new reserves are not found and the slow pressure in supply lines may not be overcome altogether if pressure for supply not reduced. Bangladesh has already several LPG marketing companies, but it will have to import the whole lot of LPG, save a small fraction locally produced. What is at stake is that the days for subsidized gas use in households are going over and it is getting expensive to users at all levels.
