Just as the Summit LNG terminal resumed feeding the national grid yesterday, Excelerate Energy’s terminal went offline following another technical fault, prolonging the severe gas shortage that has stifled economic activities.
Excelerate’s terminal, the Excellence, had a fire incident on July 21 and went offline. It resumed operations at half the capacity on August 6. It tripped again around 4:00pm yesterday, The Daily Star has learnt from Petrobangla officials.
The terminal was expected to resume supply later last night, but at the time of filing the report at 10:30pm, it was offline.
About two hours after the Excellence went offline, Summit’s terminal, which had stopped operating from 5:00pm Thursday as it ran out of gas, began feeding the national grid again.
However, the resumption was not without drama.
The terminal was scheduled to receive a shipment from Saudi Aramco on Wednesday via the Al Hamra tanker. But the vessel was not accepted by either terminal.
The Al Hamra, built in 1997, is a Moss-type LNG carrier with a capacity of about 1.35 lakh cubic metres. Its age and containment system, however, do not by themselves establish the reason for the rejection. The specific technical and insurance requirements it failed to meet have not been disclosed by the terminal authorities or Petrobangla.
There was a dispute between the terminal authorities and the tanker authorities, according to Petrobangla officials.
“We had nothing to do with that. We tried to negotiate, but as there was a risk of another disruption, the terminal authorities did not accept it,” said one of the Petrobangla officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak candidly on the issue.
Asked why the problem with the vessel had not been identified earlier, the official said the supplier normally selects the tanker.
Petrobangla has asked Aramco to send another ship instead, its acting chairman Md Abdul Mannan told journalists yesterday.
The sales and purchase agreement with the supplier allows Petrobangla to seek a replacement ship if an LNG shipment is found to be unsuitable, he said.
Meanwhile, the tanker BW Lesmes offloaded its cargo to the Summit terminal yesterday, allowing it to resume operations.
Initially, the terminal sent around 110 million cubic feet per day (mmcfd). The supply is expected to gradually increase to around 550 mmcfd by about 2:00am today, according to a statement from Summit.
The two FSRUs are Bangladesh’s only LNG import facilities, with a combined regasification capacity of around 1,100 mmcfd: Summit’s capacity is around 500 mmcfd and Excelerate’s 600 mmcfd.
If the Summit terminal returns to near full capacity this morning, it should have raised total gas availability substantially. But with Excelerate’s latest technical problem still unresolved, the country’s gas deficit is expected to remain.
The shortage has severely affected gas-fired power generation, industries and CNG stations. Homes are experiencing very lower gas pressure.
