One Fire, One Crisis

The fire at Excelerate Energy’s floating LNG terminal in Moheshkhali did more than interrupt one piece of equipment; it revealed the scale of Bangladesh’s dependence on a single facility. The terminal was shut after a 21 July fire damaged electrical cable systems linked to its boiler operations, removing about 450 million cubic feet of gas a day from the national grid. When one regasification unit partially restarted more than two weeks later, it returned only around 115 million cubic feet a day. The terminal normally processes 500 to 550 million. A restart, therefore, was not a recovery: most of the lost supply was still unavailable. The arithmetic is stark. Bangladesh’s grid typically receives about 2,600 million cubic feet of gas a day, so the outage removed roughly 17 per cent of normal supply in one event. Shortages affected power generation, industrial production, and households. An accident becomes a national crisis when the surrounding system has too little room to absorb it. Moheshkhali did not create Bangladesh’s energy weakness. It measured it.

The deeper contradiction is that Bangladesh has substantial power-generation capacity but too little dependable fuel. Gas demand is estimated at 3,800 to 4,000 million cubic feet a day, against a typical grid supply of around 2,600 million. The system is therefore short by roughly 1,200 to 1,400 million cubic feet even in ordinary conditions. BPDB’s current dashboard lists 12,472 megawatts of gas-fired generation, equal to 42.15 per cent of installed power capacity. Yet installed capacity and available electricity are different things: a gas-fired plant cannot generate without gas. This gap explains why the terminal outage travelled so quickly through the economy. The same limited supply serves power stations, industries and homes. When 450 million cubic feet disappears, the government cannot replace it by pointing to unused megawatts on a capacity chart. It must distribute the shortage. The revealing comparison is therefore not between how many plants Bangladesh has built and how many it had before. It is between the capacity printed on paper and the energy the system can reliably deliver.

The July fire was also not the first warning from Moheshkhali. In May 2023, Cyclone Mocha forced both of Bangladesh’s floating LNG terminals to close, and the country experienced its worst power cuts in more than seven months. In May 2024, Cyclone Remal damaged the Summit-operated FSRU. Bangladesh’s LNG regasification capacity fell from about 1,100 million to 600 million cubic feet a day, and the terminal remained out of operation for about four months. The causes were different, but the result was similar each time: a large share of imported gas became unavailable after trouble struck, with facilities concentrated off the same coastal area. This repetition changes the meaning of the latest event. A first disruption may be treated as an emergency; repeated disruptions form a pattern. Restoring the terminal after each breakdown is necessary, but restoration alone does not answer why the same national vulnerability keeps returning.

Bangladesh’s exposure is no longer confined to what happens at Moheshkhali. It also begins thousands of kilometres away. Qatar was Bangladesh’s largest LNG supplier in 2025, providing about 4.15 million tonnes of the nearly 7 million tonnes the country imported. In 2026, Qatar Energy halved its scheduled deliveries to Bangladesh as the war involving Iran restricted shipments through the Strait of Hormuz. Bangladesh had received 19 Qatari cargoes under long-term contracts before the war began on 28 February, but none loaded from Qatar’s Ras Laffan facility afterward; it imported 35 spot cargoes from March to cover the shortfall. Bangladesh therefore faces risk at both ends of the same chain. A cargo may be unavailable abroad, or a terminal may be unable to process it at home. Japan’s Strategic Buffer LNG programme offers a useful comparison. Under that programme, certified private suppliers procure surplus LNG in advance with government support. During emergencies, the gas can be redirected to domestic utilities to prevent disruption and create time for the system to adjust. Japan cannot eliminate global supply risk, but it has created a mechanism intended to absorb part of the shock. Bangladesh’s recent experience shows what happens when an external supply shortage and a domestic infrastructure failure arrive in the same strained system.

The policy lesson is not that Bangladesh can suddenly abandon LNG. The verified figures show why that is unrealistic: domestic gas production is declining, demand already exceeds supply, and gas-fired plants account for 42.15 per cent of installed generation capacity. The lesson is that dependence must be matched by protection. The July fire should lead to a public technical investigation into its cause, the maintenance record, the availability of replacement equipment and the speed of restoration. Petrobangla should publish regular terminal-level supply figures so that a partial restart cannot be mistaken for full recovery. Future import capacity should be judged by whether it reduces exposure to the loss of an existing terminal, not simply by how many additional cubic feet it promises during normal operation. Bangladesh must also reduce pressure on gas through accountable domestic exploration, more efficient fuel use, and electricity sources that do not require imported LNG. These conclusions follow from a clear comparison: Japan maintains a government-supported strategic buffer, while Bangladesh repeatedly enters disruptions with a large pre-existing supply gap. A country that loses roughly one-sixth of its normal gas supply when one terminal stops is not facing a temporary technical inconvenience. It is operating an essential national system with too little protection against failure.
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The writer is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Philosophy at IUBAT and is currently on study leave, residing in Oslo, Norway