A master plan for natural gas resources is in the making as the government lays out a new development strategy for the sector, State Minister for Power, Energy and Mineral Resources Nasrul Hamid said yesterday.
He did not disclose when the master plan would be published.
“We want to bring the management of the gas sector under a new master plan. Gas is being misused because of supplies to Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) stations. This misuse of the resource is leading towards a gas deficit,” he said at a seminar at the Jatiya Press Club in the capital.
The Awami League sub-committee on publicity and publications organised the seminar titled “Alokito Bangladesh.”
“The biggest blunder of the BNP – Jamaat regime with regard to the energy sector was to set up CNG stations on a massive scale by grabbing government land,” he said.
“Now we think there should be better management in the sector. We will try to supply more CNG to public transport vehicles instead of supplying to private vehicles,” he said.
“We have already planned to install pre-paid gas metres to reduce corruption and wastage in the power and gas sectors,” he said.
“Pre-paid metres have already been installed in many areas to limit the waste of electricity and gas,” he said.
The state minister said digitisation was under way in his ministry to control corruption.
“We favour the adjustment of gas and power prices. That does not mean that the government is hiking prices,” he said.
“We sent two proposals regarding gas and power to the Bangladesh Energy Regulatory Commission (BERC) to adjust the prices,” he said.
He said currently the price of gas covers merely the extraction and distribution cost of the commodity, not the commodity value itself.
With regard to power, the rise in production costs will drive a rise in electricity prices, he said.
The final decision in this regard, however, will be taken by the BERC, he added.
“We will invest $20bn to install power plants over the next five years.
“Of that amount, $10bn will come from foreign investors,” he said.
During the last five years, $5.2bn has already been invested in the power sector while projects with a value of $8.5bn are currently being implemented, Tawfiq-e-Elahi Chowdhury, the prime minister’s power, energy and mineral resources adviser, said at the seminar.
Subrata Kumar Aditya, professor of applied physics, electronics and communication engineering at Dhaka University presented the keynote paper at the seminar.
“In 2009, the power generation capacity of Bangladesh was 4,931MW. Within 6 years, the power generation capacity has grown to 10,648MW with around 68% of the population having access to electricity.
“This spectacular success was achieved using long-term, mid-term and emergency measures adopted as part of the government’s overall power and energy policy,” Subrata said.
Presided over by AL publicity and publications secretary, Hasan Mahmud, the seminar was addressed, among others, by Parliamentary Standing Committee on Power, Energy and Mineral Resources Chairman Tajul Islam and Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology Professor Ijaz Hossain.
