The government will temporarily suspend gas supplies to fertiliser factories to ensure uninterrupted power during the irrigation season and summer, Prime Minister's Energy Affairs Adviser Tawfiq-e-Elahi Chowdhury has said.
"Our priority is to ensure maximum power supply to irrigation pumps during summer for paddy production," he told reporters in Dhaka on Wednesday. The government has been doing so for the last five years to facilitate irrigation.
But gas supply will remain uninterrupted at the state-owned Jamuna Fertiliser Factory. Power officials said if gas supply to seven fertiliser factories is halted, power plants will get an additional 200 million cubic feet of gas a day (mmcfd) which will boost power production by 500MW.
Bangladesh's irrigation season mainly lasts through March to June, and the government has to supply an additional 2,000MW to irrigation pumps.
Power Division Secretary Monwar Islam said Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina would inaugurate four power plants through video conference on Thursday. She will also inaugurate 6,000 new power connections in Gopalganj's Kotalipara.
He said the power plants went into production several months ago and had already fed 535.2MW to the national grid. Three of the plants are furnace oil-based and the other is gas-fired. Two of them were built by independent power producers – 52.2MW plant in Comilla and 108MW plant in Chittagong. State-owned company built the other 150MW plant in Gazipur and 225MW plant in Ashuganj.
Power generation has reached 14,271MW from 3,268MW in 2009. The government plans to generate 24,000MW to ensure electricity for all by 2021. Monowar said 80% of the population had access to electricity. "We want to increase it to 95% within this government's tenure.”
