A meeting is scheduled to be held on December 10 to finalise the board of directors in order to form a new company to import liquefied natural gas (LNG).
The firm is named LNG Power Company Bangladesh Limited.
“The demand for natural gas is rising gradually, causing the government to establish a company for importing gas to avoid any sudden gas crisis,” Mohammad Hossain, director general of Power Cell, a state-owned entity under the Ministry of Power, Energy and Mineral Resources, told the Dhaka Tribune yesterday.
He said the existing gas reserve is depleting, causing severe gas crisis in the country, especially in the gas-fired power plants.
“Some of these plants are running below the capacity and a few were closed due to non-availability of gas. The government is going to set up the country’s first-ever land-based LNG terminal in Chittagong’s Anwara or Moheshkhali in Cox’s Bazar. The company to be formed will also administer operations at the terminal,” said
The onshore terminal will be the country’s second LNG terminal, with the other planned as an offshore one.
In mid-April, Power Cell issued a tender seeking EOIs (Expression of Interest) from international firms to build an onshore LNG import terminal, with a handling capacity of 3.5 million tonnes a year.
Five globally renowned firms have already been shortlisted and those are Huanqiu Contracting and Engineering Corporation of China, Royal Dutch Shell Plc of the Netherlands, Tractebel Engineering and TSK Construction of Belgium, Mitsui and Company Ltd in Japan and Petronet LNG Ltd of India.
The terminal will be set up on the build-own-operate basis and gas from it will be supplied to the gas-based power plants.
Power Cell planned to set up a land-based LNG terminal to feed a proposed 1,000MW combined cycle power plant, as well as feeding the existing power plants in Raozan and Sikalbaha by one or more high pressure gas transmission pipelines to be connected from the terminal.
The Energy and Mineral Resources Division meanwhile has decided to set up the country’s first floating storage and re-gasification unit, otherwise known as LNG terminal, in Moheshkhali.