Reserve gas amount in the country is falling fast. The gas reserve of 28 trillion cubic feet has now come down to 12 TCF. Hydro Carbon Unit, an energy specialist company says that the reserve will end within the next 20 years.
At present, gas is being excavated from 26 mines and the total reserve has reduced; in the last few years, no new gas block was discovered in the country. Sources say the gas fields under BAPEX had 1460.8 billion cubic feet of gas which have come down to 1038.9 billion cubic feet.
The only gas field on the sea, Sangu, is now abandoned. It was under Cairn and had 771 billion cubic feet of gas. However, saying that gas could not be found, CAIRN left the field, selling shares to an Australian company, Santos. But they could not find gas either and also left.
The three gas fields under Chevron had 6 thousand 372 billion cubic feet of gas, which has come down to 1 thousand 88.4 billion.
Energy specialist, Shamsul Alam, says: “To quickly recover the investment, foreign companies are raising more gas than needed; on the other hand, since BAPEX is sitting idle, research, for now, gas reserves are stalled.”
The focus now should be to find new gas reserves; we have not done any exploration at sea or in the hill tracts, he added.
Energy specialist, M Tamim, adds: “We are already too late; we must start to explore new gas blocks soon; we found new blocks in 2014 though no initiative was taken to explore it.”
Saying that the government is tilting towards import of gas, he deplored: “If new gas blocks are not discovered, import cost will soar.”