Bangladesh to import LNG
LNG GLOBAL RESERVE
Bangladesh is in talks with service companies for a floating LNG import facility and with LNG suppliers including Qatar to import the fuel, Shahidul Abedin, director of Bangladesh Oil, Gas & Mineral Corp., said in Singapore today.
“We will initially use a floating regassification unit to speed up imports and then build an onshore terminal near Chittagong,” Abedin said in an interview at the LNG Supplies in Asia Pacific conference in Singapore. “We need LNG to augment our production.”
South Asian countries including India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, which once had a surplus of gas, are now resorting to imports of the cleaner-burning fuel in frozen form to meet a growing shortage. Consumption of gas in South Asia is rising more than 7 percent annually as governments build new power plants to provide electricity to industries and households.
Bangladesh plans to import between 3 million metric tons and 4 million tons of LNG a year, Abedin said. That would be adequate to meet the nation’s current shortage of about 500 million cubic feet of gas a day. Demand is currently at 2.5 billion cubic feet a day, Abedin said. Gas consumption is growing as much as 8 percent a year while output is constrained by delays in awards of new deepwater areas, he said.
Bangladesh Oil, or Petrobangla, plans to increase its 2 billion cubic feet a day of existing output by as much as 300 million cubic feet a day in three years as it tries to resolve the territorial disputes in offshore waters with India and Myanmar, Abedin said.
Area Disputes
The government is unable to issue exploration licenses in deepwater areas to Conoco and Tullow because Myanmar and India are laying claim to the areas, Abedin said.
Bangladesh is seeking to attract about $4 billion of investments in power plants and the LNG terminal, Tawfiq-e-Elahi Chowdhury, 64, energy adviser to Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wajed, said in November.
LNG is gas that is cooled to a liquid for transport by ship to markets not connected by pipelines. The fuel is received at import terminals and converted back to a gaseous form so it can be piped to users.
What is LNG?
Liquefied natural gas, or LNG, is natural gas that has been supercooled to
minus 260 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 162 degrees Celcius). At that temperature, natural gas condenses into a liquid. When in liquid form, natural gas takes up to 600 times less space than in its gaseous state, which makes it feasible to transport over long distances.
In the form of LNG, natural gas can be shipped from the parts of the world where it is abundant to where it is in demand.
LNG is an energy source that has much lower air emissions than other fossil fuels, such as oil or coal.
LNG is odorless, colorless, non-corrosive and non-toxic. Its weight is less than one-half that of water.
The use of LNG is a proven, reliable and safe process, and it has been used in the United States since 1944.
Natural gas is the world’s cleanest burning fossil fuel and it has emerged as the environmentally preferred fuel of choice.
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