The gas crisis in the capital and surrounding areas has begun to escalate with gas pressure in the pipeline now too low to cook in many areas during the peak hours in the morning.
Mir Moshiur Rahman, director (operation) of Titas Gas Transmission and Distribution Company Ltd told the Dhaka Tribune on Wednesday how condensation is mixed with gas on a greater scale during the winter season.
“The condensation travels through the pipeline with the gas and because of lower temperature, it gets stuck on the different edges of the pipeline. As a result the pipes get narrow and distribution is hampered,” he said, adding that domestic consumers normally increase the use of gas during this season for boiling water and drying cloths.
“In the capital, there are pipes with widths of one to 1.5 inches which cannot bear the necessary pressure of gas flow,” Moshiur said.
Titas Gas has around 1.55 million residential clients and distributes around 1,500 million cubic feet per day (mmcfd) against a demand of 2000mmcfd, officials said.
With the crisis at hand, Titas Gas has sought an additional 150mmcfd gas from Petrobangla to ease the situation.
Hundreds of residences in different areas in the capital, including Mirpur, Mohammadpur, Shewrapara, Kafrul, East Rajabazar, Pallabi, Kazipara, Taltola, Malibag, Shyamoli, Khilgaon, Kalyanpur, Tejgaon, and Jatrabari were suffering, with the locals having to suspend domestic activities for almost half of the day because of the gas shortage.
According to Petrobangla, the current demand of gas across the country was 3,000mmcfd, while production stood at 2,300mmcfd.
Shopna, a resident of Mohammadpur, said there was no gas supply to her home for about seven hours every day from 9am. Her family’s expenditure had increased as all the meals now needed to be prepared with a kerosene stove, she added.
Khaleda Yasmin, a resident of Jatrabari, has to wake up every day at 5am to prepare breakfast and lunch for her family.
“Gas supply in our area has been woefully low between 8am and 5pm every day for the last few days,” she said.
Petrobangla officials admitted that a decrease in gas pressure had also created transmission and distribution problems in some areas, especially in the northwestern part of the capital.
Some owners of the CNG-filling stations said they were being forced to shut down because of the low gas pressure, which is resulting in long queues of vehicles and causing traffic congestions on the adjacent roads.