Editorial
New gas reserve at Sangu
A heartening news
The discovery by an Australian gas exploration company Santos that a modest reserve of gas has been foundat a Sangu well in the Bay of Bengal is an elevating piece of news.
The new find holds special significance for Chittagong as it will now be possible to supply between 20 and 30 million cubic feet per day (mmcfd) of gas to its fuel-starved industries.
The latest gas find follows on the heels of an announcement in early September 2011 by Petrobangla, the state-owned mineral oil and gascompany, that it has struck a new gas structure at Rashidpur with a reserve of about 3 trillion cubic feet (TCF).
It was further reported that once it went operational, Rashidpur field would make available 55 mmcfd gas in the near future.
It is worthwhile to note that the 18 gas fields now in operation can produce around 2,064 mmdfd of gas, while at the moment the country needs around 2,500 mmcfd of gas. The latest find of gas at Sangu, albeit in a small way, will go to reduce that widening demand-supply gap of this crucial energy source.
The discoveries augur well when the country is experiencing severe gas crisis that has negatively affected production in the industries, forced some power plants to stop production of electricity and even impacted negatively on the day-to-day lives of its citizens.
Though the exact amount of gas at the new site in question in the Bay is yet to be ascertained, still the expectation that the port city's industries will be assured of at least two years' supply is rather comforting. Once they get used to the supply they will be only looking for assured continuity of it.
We think the success at the Sangu will encourage other international oil companies operating at different other fields as well as Petrobangla to step up their efforts to discover new gas fields to solve the country's need for fuel.
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