Bangladesh’s LNG purchases cover December, minister says—but at a steep cost

Power, Energy and Mineral Resources Minister Iqbal Hasan Mahmud said on November 14 that Bangladesh had bought enough LNG to maintain normal gas supply through December 2026, based on current demand. He described gas supply as fairly stable after a disruption that shut down many power plants and caused extensive difficulties for factories.⁠1

That is a meaningful near-term assurance, but a narrower one than a guarantee of uninterrupted electricity. Buying LNG, getting it delivered, converting it back into gas and keeping power stations and the electricity network working are separate requirements. The announcement establishes the minister’s account of purchases—not an independently verified balance of fuel available against demand.

Mahmud spoke at the Fifth Bangladesh Economic Conference-2026, organized by Bonik Barta at a hotel in Dhaka. The event addressed the economy, investment and energy security amid global uncertainty. His supply assurance was explicitly tied to present gas demand; it did not establish that all the purchased fuel was already physically stored in Bangladesh.⁠1

The disruption began, in the minister’s account, with problems involving a floating LNG terminal. Such infrastructure—a floating storage and regasification unit, or FSRU—stores imported liquefied gas and converts it back into gas for supply to users. A failure at that link can leave power plants and factories short of usable fuel even when imports have been arranged.⁠1

The scale of the resulting shortage needs careful handling. In their November 14 reports, Dhakatimes24 and The Daily Inqilab described Mahmud as saying gas pressure fell to nearly half. Barlekha Today’s report that day instead described the country’s gas supply falling by nearly half. Those are different measurements: a pressure reduction cannot simply be read as the same reduction in the volume of gas supplied. The reports do not resolve that difference with dated operational measurements.⁠1⁠3⁠2

What the accounts consistently describe is serious disruption to power generation and industry. Mahmud said many power plants shut down and factories suffered greatly. The affected vessel, its operator, the outage dates and a repair timetable have not been established in the available reporting.⁠1⁠3

Bangladesh responded by buying additional LNG on the spot market, outside long-term contracts. Mahmud said LNG bought in the Singapore market also became substantially more expensive. He put the earlier price at $12 per unit and the latest purchase price at $31—more than two and a half times as much.⁠1

There is an important qualification to those figures. Barlekha Today’s November 14 report gives both prices per MMBtu, or million British thermal units, a measure of energy. Dhakatimes24 and The Daily Inqilab say only “per unit.” No procurement award has been established to independently confirm the pricing unit or contractual basis. Nor did the reports identify the transaction dates and terms behind the comparison. These are the purchases the minister cited, not a verified average across Bangladesh’s LNG imports or a domestic gas tariff.⁠2⁠1⁠3

In Mahmud’s assessment, the higher LNG price brought the cost of gas-fired electricity almost level with oil-fired generation. Some units at oil-based power plants were therefore restarted to manage the shortage. That explains the operational choice, but not its full financial consequences: the reporting provides no plant-by-plant cost comparison, count of restarted units or total additional purchasing bill.⁠1⁠3

Mahmud’s account of the present was more settled than his description of the crisis. He said load-shedding—the deliberate cutting of electricity when supply falls short—had been very low for roughly two weeks. He attributed interruptions in some places to technical faults rather than the fuel crisis.⁠1

Those are qualitative assessments, not evidence that outages have ended. The available reports do not provide a two-week series of gas deliveries, unmet demand or electricity interruptions against which to test them. For a factory trying to keep production running, the distinction is practical: fuel availability addresses one cause of disruption, not every cause.

The December purchases also come without a disclosed cargo count, LNG volume, supplier list, award references or delivery schedule in the reporting supporting the announcement. That absence does not disprove the purchases. It does limit how precisely readers can assess whether the fuel will arrive when needed.⁠1⁠2⁠3

January 2027 remains the next procurement task. Mahmud said planning for that month’s fuel purchases would follow; he did not announce completed January purchases or their price. December coverage buys Bangladesh a near-term fuel horizon. Maintaining it into the new year still requires purchases to become firm deliveries—and leaves the cost of doing so unresolved.⁠1⁠3