Energy Minister Iqbal Hassan Mahmood warned on Thursday that Bangladesh’s gas shortage will temporarily worsen because repairs to a fire-damaged floating LNG terminal will require the FSRU to be shut down for 72 hours.

Engineers from Britain and Singapore are carrying out the repair work, the minister said. Once it is complete, two boilers will have to be started simultaneously, and technical coordination will require a continuous three-day shutdown.

“This will temporarily lead to a severe gas shortage in the country,” Mahmood told a discussion organised by the Centre for Policy Dialogue in Dhaka.

The current crisis began after a fire at the floating LNG terminal, he said. “There is limited scope to address the immediate institutional constraints, however. Gas extraction can’t be ramped up suddenly, nor can the existing gas be unloaded and fed into the national grid until the FSRU is back in service. We therefore have to work within the current management framework.”

“We have nothing to do but count the days while the engineers repair the terminal,” the minister said. “The other thing is management, so that load-shedding is reduced and I can give gas to industry.”

He said the government had ordered one new FSRU and planned to install three at Payra, Mongla and Hiron Point by 2029. To ease industrial shortages, authorities have allowed a company to run 30 trucks carrying gas from Bhola in containers and are discussing direct containerised gas supply with a Malaysian firm.

The minister said battery-powered rickshaws had increased electricity demand, with most charged through illegal connections after midnight and peak demand had reached about 18,000 megawatts. Teams trying to disconnect illegal supply even faced attacks, Mahmood said.

He rejected social media claims that a single industrial group was being handed a monopoly on fuel oil trading. A new policy would allow private companies to import oil under set conditions, he said. To encourage solar power, import duty on solar batteries and inverters has been cut to 5 percent and a five-year tax exemption introduced, the minister added.