State Minister for Power, Energy and Mineral Resources Nasrul Hamid has said that the government has a plan to introduce an automatic fuel price adjustment system in the next two months.
“We have been working on modernising the pricing policy to get out of the subsidy in selling petroleum. Under the system, when the price goes up or down in the global market, local prices will be automatically adjusted with new price”, he told reporters on his last day of office as the state minister for power and energy in the tenure of the current government.
Nasrul Hamid said that the government has no control over the global energy price.
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“If there is any energy crisis on the global market, we need to face it efficiently and the government always tries to remain prepared to face”.
Mentioning looming risk of a new crisis centring the Middle East crisis against the backdrop of any possible new war, he said if the situation deteriorates, the power and energy supply situation may worsen.
“We are getting prepared but worries prevail about the level of the energy crisis”, he added.
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About any possibility of power tariff reduction after commencement of a number of new base-load large power plants, he said there would not be much benefit from it because of the dollar price escalation.
Prices of primary fuels like coal and petroleum may decline, but due to increasing rates of dollars, overall generation cost is not coming down.
He said that the Chevron-operated Bibiyana gas field’s gas reserve has a potential to get over 1 TCF (trillion cubic feet) of gas in the new area where drilling works are taking place.
He mentioned that gas production may decrease towards 2025-26, but the gap will be filled in 2027 with the new import plant.
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Currently, the US-based Chevron Bangladesh is producing gas from a total of three blocks.
They have Bibiyana gas field in block-12, Jalalabad gas field in block-13, Moulvibazar gas field in block-14. Bibiyana is one of the largest gas fields in the country. The 3 gas fields produce about 44.3 percent while total gas production is about 2200 MMCFD in Bangladesh.