Plan for fuel diversification

Fuel diversification has been adopted as a strategy to reduce dependency on natural gas for electricity generation and for energy security in 2019-2020 budgets.
Although the Finance Minister AHM Mostafa Kamal did not give any specific direction on the alternative use of energy but he said 'in order to ensure energy security and sustainable energy supply system, we have plans to reduce the use of fuel to 15 per cent by 2021 and to 20 per cent by 2030.'
The Finance Minister's speech gives us a direction that we are going to increase our dependency on LNG. Yes, the production cost of power from LNG would be less than the liquid fuel based power plants but it would also gave us a signal that we are going to become a fully import based country in a very short time, former adviser to the caretaker government and a BUET teacher Dr M Tamim told the daily Observer on Thursday.     Giving his reaction on the budget speech and allocation on energy and power sector, Tamim said the present government has implemented various projects to set up coal based power plants as an alternative for natural gas but it did not address the coal extraction issue, even coal sourcing issue for next couple of years.
"Finance Minister has kept mum on Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) issue in his budget speech although the government is importing 500mmcf LNG and plans to import another 500 mmcf LNG by this year," he said.
"Ever, it did not mention anything about the subsidy here, so far I know we are spending Tk 14,000 crore to import LNG right now and it would stand at Tk 20,000 crore by this current fiscal year."
Budget is not that much important to me, but my observation is the two big challenges of this sector, subsidy and price adjustment.
"From 2020 we need to pay Tk 30.000 crore for LNG import, and we have to pay this amount in foreign currency. What will be the source of the money," he asked.
The energy expert said in last ten years Bangladesh did not go for any oil and gas exploration work, we said we are engaging BAPEX in our onshore areas but at the same time the Gazprom is working here, taking huge money they are just doing the development work here, he said.
"We settle the maritime boundary issue in 2014 but failed to use the verdict for our exploration in sea areas, even, we could not be able to do a survey work there just to collect data on own resources," Dr Tamim said.