A committee of the Energy Division recently recommended Petrobangla to provide gas connections to 54 new CNG (compressed natural gas) filling stations.
But state-run Bangladesh Oil, Gas and Mineral Corporation (Petrobangla) Chairman Hossain Mansur said the decision would be taken by a high-powered six-member committee.
Head of this committee, Prime Minister’s former adviser Tawfiq-E-Elahi Chowdhury, and an influential member former State Minister for Power and Energy Muhammed Enamul Huq are no more in their posts.
“I don’t know what would happen in the implementation of the recommendation by the energy division in their absence,” the Petrobangla chairman told the Dhaka Tribune.
According to the Energy Division, the CNG re-fuelling stations have been waiting for gas connections since 2009.
The Energy Division committee, headed by additional secretary Md Golam Mostafa, at a meeting on November 26 in Dhaka also recommended increasing the station owners’ margin by Tk2 for selling a cubic metre of feed gas.
At present, the station owners sell per unit of CNG at Tk30 and pay the gas companies Tk23 for per unit of gas, keeping a margin of Tk7.
“The margin has been recommended to increase from Tk7 to Tk9 per unit,” Mostafa said. On September 19, 2011, BERC set the price of CNG at Tk30 per cubic metre, increasing the price by Tk5 per cubic metre.
He said the sales margin would, however, be settled by Bangladesh Energy Regulatory Commission (BERC), which earlier rejected a Petrobangla proposal to raise the margin.
CNG Filling Station and Conversion Workshop Owners Association President Zakir Hossain Nayan, who is a member of the Energy Division committee, said they demanded increasing the margin as well as the new gas connections.
Currently, Petrobangla supplies about 120 million cubic feet or 3.40 million cubic metre against the demand of 130mmcf of natural gas a day to 585 CNG filling stations across the country.