Editorial
National energy security put at risk
Bapex fails to deliver
The nation's hopes had been raised when Bangladesh Petroleum Exploration Company (Bapex) had declared that the nation was, literally, floating on gas in Netrokona-Sunamganj area. According to Bapex's estimates, the area was sitting on 2 trillion cubic feet (tcf) of gas. Unfortunately, initial drilling down to 4,500 metres has only found small pockets of gas. This puts a huge dent in the government's plans to pump in significant new gas supplies in the national grid.
Authorities contend that until “logging†is done, a process that would give detail information about the nature of geological formations of gas pockets underground, the final estimate cannot be ascertained. Only upon completion of all exploratory works will tell us whether or not the “Sunetra†field will be able to deliver or not the big promises that have been made. But initial results are not very promising.
What we are faced with is that the nation's energy planning has been made based on dubious calculations. The implications for such faulty assessment can in no way be viewed lightly. Energy planning for a host of other sectors has been made based on a 2tcf find and these include transmission pipelines and a number of gas-fired power plants. When the present government came to power in 2009, it embarked on an ambitious plan to boost power generation. Stepping into its final year in office, the government has an installed capacity of 2,315 megawatts of new power plants that are dependent on imported liquid fuels. In the current fiscal, it is estimated that the government will be spending as much as US$3 billion on fuel import. The Sunetra gas find that now looks more and more like a pipedream was supposed to ease the power generation sector away from costly rental power.
Mono sourcing, i.e. dependence on a single source of fuel supply like gas and an overt dependence on oil guzzling power plants has not paid dividends. Given ground realities, it is now up to policymakers to come up with a pragmatic approach that will fast track sourcing of diversified fuel supplies and ensure current and future energy security.
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