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Power and energy ministry entities trade blame over gas supply
M Azizur Rahman
10/29/2005
The Power Division and the Energy and Mineral Resources Division (EMRD) under the Ministry of Power, Energy and Mineral Resources (MPEMR) are at loggerheads over gas supply and consumption at power plants.
Top brasses of both the divisions are accusing each other for their prevailing worst performances across the country, official sources said.
"The EMRD is not providing sufficient gas to our power plants to generate adequate electricity to ease the nagging power crisis across the country," the State Minister of the Power Division Iqbal Hasan Mahmood pointed out recently describing the manifold reasons towards the prevailing electricity crisis.
He said the newly installed Tongi 80 mega-watt (MW) gas-fired power plant is now in forced shutdown as the EMRD is failing to provide gas to generate power to this particular power plant as an instance.
Tongi power plant is the scapegoat of the EMRD's latest inventive policy - the gas rationing - to conceal the latter's failure to supply sufficient gas to the power plants, a senior MPEMR official said.
The EMRD Adviser Mahmudur Rahman has refuted Mahmood's allegation saying the EMRD is supplying proportionately sufficient gas to the gas-fired power plants.
"The EMRD expedited gas production by 50 per cent in the last four years whereas the Power Division could increase electricity generation by 25 per cent during the said period," he said.
He said country's gas production capacity during the year 2001 was 1050 million cubic feet per day (mmcfd), which has now increased to as high as 1520 mmcfd.
But the Power Division could add around 750mw in last four years from 2950mw in 2001 to 3700mw in 2006.
Besides, gas consumption by the power sector increased by around 6.0 percentage points in last several years, a senior EMRD official said.
The power sector used to consume 40 per cent of the country's total gas production in a couple of years back, which has risen to 46 per cent now.
Pointing to the Tongi power plant EMRD Adviser argued the site selection for installing Tongi power plant was wrong as Tongi is one of the 'growth zones' of in terms of gas consumption as a number of industries are located there.
Besides, the Power Division's policy to install gas-fired power plant in the country's prevailing energy scenario is not logical, he added.
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