GAS SUPPLY SHORTAGE : Titas to snap gas connections to geysers, brick kilns

In view of acute gas shortage, the state-run gas distribution utility for Dhaka and its adjacent districts Titas would shut down all gas-run geysers and brick kilns by this year.
Titas Gas Transmission and Distribution Company towards the end of last week served notices on the domestic consumers asking them to snap gas connections to run their geysers in three months, a Titas official told New Age.
It also asked the owners of brick kilns to snap gas connections used in manufacturing bricks and to develop facilities for the use of alternative primary fuels by October 31, 2016, according to the notice served by Titas on Monday.
The Titas notice also warned its consumers that they would be penalised under the Bangladesh Gas Act- 2010 and Gas Distribution Rules-2014 if they do not snap the gas connections to geysers and brick kilns.
The Titas notice followed an order issued by energy and mineral resources division, officials said.
They said that the measure was taken to ensure more ‘worthy’ utilisation of natural gas, reserve of which was depleting fast.
They also said that government was expecting that the measure of snapping gas connections to the geysers would improve the supply situation to the households located at the ends of gas supply lines.
The Titas officials could not say the volume of gas they could save from snapping gas connections to geysers and brick kilns.
Top officials, including the energy division secretary Nazimuddin Chowdhury and Titas managing director Md Nowshad Islam, declined to comment on the matter.
An energy division official, however, said on condition of anonymity that the government had no other options but to divert the supply of natural gas from the ‘less’ priority areas to the ‘higher’ priority ones as the demand for natural gas outpaced the supply by about 20 per cent.
Now, Petrobangla, the state-run Oil, Gas and Mineral Resources Corporation, supplies 2,700 million cubic feet of gas a day to the national grid against a demand for 3,500 mmcfd, a Petrobangla official said.
The official data, however, says that the shortfall is 500 mmcfd, 300 mmcfd less than the real shortfall.
The energy division official also said failure in discovering fresh gas reserves in more than
a decade has put the government in the trouble to manage the shortage of gas supply.
In the wake of acute shortage of gas supply, the government, in 2010, started rationing gas supply among the power stations, fertiliser factories and CNG filling stations.

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