It is heartening to know that, because of the volatile LNG price in the global market, the government is now mulling over an underground LNG storage at abandoned Sangu gas field. The aim is to ensure smooth gas supply to the national grid at an affordable price. In order to meet the increasing demand for gas from industries and power sectors, the government started importing LNG in 2018. Now, to ensure increasing gas supply, the government is planning to use the abandoned Sangu gas field in the Bay as an underground storage to store imported liquefied natural gas (LNG).

The plan, however, is to import and store LNG at a cheaper price and use it when demand increases and price goes up on the international market. The Sangu gas field, discovered in 1996 by Cairn Energy, was in production until 2013. From then on, maintenance of the Sangu platform has remained off for a long time.

Meanwhile, Petrobangla, the state-owned company that explores, produces, transports and sells natural gas, has already signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the American multinational oil and gas corporation ExxonMobil for conducting an engineering study on the field to find out the feasibility of using it as underground gas storage. Once the feasibility study is done, it will be clear how much LNG could be stored there and what will be the cost of storage and reproduction of the stored gas.

However, the project is now in a very primary stage. It will be wise taking further initiatives if the project is found technically and financially feasible in the engineering study. Therefore, the records of site history, geology, hydrogeology/hydrology, waste, pollution incidents etc should be taken into account to produce a conceptual model.

On the contrary, some energy experts expressed concern about the recovery of the stored gas and whether it would be financially and economically viable. It is because leakage in the storage will not serve the purpose; hence, such storage has to be technically reliable. At present there are 387 active gas storage fields in the US. If the share holder company applies the experience, it could be a profitable project.

Currently, Bangladesh has a demand for 4100mmcf of gas every day, while production from the local gas fields is only 2400mmcf. Therefore, the country largely depends on import, while storage is an important thing to supply gas in time. In order to ensure a smooth supply of gas to industries the Underground LNG storage is a brilliant idea. If the plan is implemented properly, it will serve country’s economic interest. In this regard, technical issue is a concern which should be addressed first.