State Minister for Power, Energy and Mineral Resources Nasrul Hamid has said the government is going to introduce automation system in the country’s entire gas transmission pipelines to ensure better management of the energy sector.
He said this while addressing the inaugural session of a two-day “South Asia LNG Forum-2019” at a Dhaka hotel on Tuesday.
“The entire gas transmission network across the country will be automated and projects required to do so will be taken up in the next two to three years for better management of the energy sector,” he added.
Nasrul said: “We have undertaken a massive project to replace the old pipelines with the new ones in Dhaka at an estimated cost of Tk1,200-Tk1,500 crore.”
On a separate note, the state minister said it was high time the government and all other stakeholders, especially industrialists and entrepreneurs thought of the energy pricing issue.
“We must think of what the fuel prices will be after five or 10 years,” he said.
More onshore gas fields
Talking about the exploration of onshore gas fields, he said: “We have discovered a massive gas field in Bhola. There are possibilities of such gas fields being found in Mymensingh and Madaripur as well.”
The government, he said, wanted to expand the use of liquefied natural gas or LNG in the next two years and was keen to “keep the prices for LNG reasonable”.
His comments on the automation and onshore gas field exploration come at a time when experts allege massive anomalies by the state-run gas companies and disinterest regarding the exploration of potential off-shore gas reserve.
“Household users do not even get 20 out of 87 units of gas allotted to each connection a day,” M Shamsul Alam, energy adviser to the Consumers’ Association of Bangladesh, said.
