The consumption has been 11 times the discovery of natural gas in 15 years, according to data available with the state-run Petrobangla.
Since 1999, state-run and foreign companies have discovered three fields —Bangura and Srikail in Comilla and Sundulpur in Noakhali — with 750 billion cubic feet of recoverable gas.
But in the 15 years, 8,140 billion cubic feet of gas have been been consumed.
Experts said that such high gas consumption along with a low discovery was a ‘big threat’ to energy security.
‘The reserve is depleting at a rate of about 1,000 billion cubic feet a year,’ energy expert Mohammad Tamim told New Age.
He said that unless the situation changed, transmission and distribution of gas, power plants, industrial power generators, CNG filling stations and fertiliser factories would be in jeopardy.
‘Several million CNG-run vehicles and more than two million domestic consumers will also lose their access to gas,’ Tamim, a professor of petroleum and mineral resources in Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology, said.
There has not been any achievement in oil and gas exploration after the discover of the Bibiyana field in 1998.
The lack of exploration has forced the authorities concerned to extract gas at an excessive rate from the existing reserves which is dangerous, Tamim said.
In 2004, Irish oil company Tullow discovered the Bangura field in Comilla with a recoverable reserve of about 500 billion cubic feet of gas, almost a half of which — 235 billion cubic feet of gas — has already been extracted.
In August 2011, the Bangladesh Petroleum Exploration Company, or Bapex, discovered a 50 bcf gas field at Sundulpur in Noakhali in August 2011 and a 161 bcf
field at Srikail in Comilla near the Bangura field in July 2012.
During the tenure of the current Awami League government, US oil company Chevron failed to discover a potential gas reserve in Hydrocarbon Block 7 in Patuakhali and Moulovibazar while Bapex also failed to identify gas in Sunetra and Kapasia structures.
The much talked-about Sunetra structure was named after the districts the structure spans — Sunamganj and Netrakona. The Kapasia structure is in Gazipur.
The volume of recoverable natural gas in Rashidpur and Titas gas fields has, however, increased by about 1,500 bcf in two years after Petrobangla subsidiary Bapex had conducted three dimensional seismic surveys on the fields.
Experts gave a warning that in the near future, the economy is likely to experience significant problems as the gas supply would drop, obstructing power and industrial production and communications with entrepreneurs losing interest in investments in the industrial sector.
Petrobangla is now struggling to meet the growing demand for natural gas as it supplies about 2.3 billion cubic feet of gas a day against a demand for more than 3 bcf.
The consumption of natural gas, now standing at 800 bcf, has experienced a huge growth in 15 years as the demand 14 years ago was less than 330 bcf a year.
Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies research director Zaid Bakht said that the energy sector was running without a medium-to-long term plan and the supply and demand management has been done on an ad hoc basis.
The expansion of demand for gas was unplanned, without taking into account the supply of the limited resource, he said.
The government has tried to prioritise enhancing oil and gas exploration but there have been no significant discoveries whilst the existing reserve is being rapidly exhausted.
The Petrobangla chairman, Hossain Monsur, said, ‘We had discoveries of two fields in recent years. But the reserves are very small.’
‘The country now does not have much potential structures unexplored,’ he added.
Monsur said that Petrobangla was giving priority to oil and gas exploration in the Bay of Bengal and reassessing old fields if more gas could be extracted.
Experts and Petrobangla officials suggest that domestically mined and imported coal should replace natural gas in power generation and liquefied petroleum gas should replace piped gas for household use.
But the government continues to set up gas-fired power plants in both the public and the private sector.
According to the government plan, dependence on natural gas for power generation will increase to 79 per cent in the 2015–16 financial year from 76 per cent in the 2012–13 financial year.
The government is also increasing the number of gas connections to households and industries.
-With New Age input
