Bangladesh to Deploy Floating Unit for LNG Imports

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Feb. 10 (Bloomberg) -- Bangladesh, which has delayed exploration awards to ConocoPhillips and Tullow Oil Plc after disputes with neighbors, may deploy a floating liquefied natural gas unit this year to plug a shortage of gas, an official said.

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 for Asian Markets 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.

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