Energy Security

A Second Look at the Energy Sector in Bangladesh
Md. Mosharraf Hossain
 

Electricity sector is passing through a difficult stage at the moment. Even with the existing low coverage of 35% of population, the system cannot cope with the demand. As the plants are old and no new additions have been made during the last six years, the supply system has been severely constrained to meet the basic needs of the consumers. There has been widespread load shedding or brown out of severe nature for consecutive years. There is huge distribution loss most of which are simple theft of electricity, which stood at 23% during the year 2005. On the other hand only 77% of electricity supplied is paid for. Due to inefficient attention to O&M there are frequent breakdown in generation leading to tripping of the stations or failure of the grid, which becomes unbearable especially during summer. There have been impediments to management and reform process by the overstaffed and heavily unionized utilities. The financial performances of the companies’ in power sector have been poor with heavy loss each year. All these have resulted to the support from the national budget for the sector.

With the assistance from the Development partners some reform steps in terms of unbundling of the operations, improving the account receivable, corporatize the existing institutions, more managerial authority to the units and setting up an Energy Regulatory Commission have been undertaken.

Natural gas

Natural gas is considered the main contributor to the commercial energy sector in the country. Bangladesh has 22 gas fields with a proven and probable gas reserve of 11.61 TCF. With the available reserves and the commitment as of now, the gas supply may continue till 2015 if no new discovery by that time is made. There are strong controversies over the gas reserves in the country: some believes that the country has about 32-62 TCF of additional gas reserves while other school of thought argues that there may be small addition and the country will run out of gas by 2020, if not earlier. There is inexcusable apathy for not paying due attention by the authorities in gas exploration and development of the reserves to meet the ongoing gas demand. During the last 5-6 years there has been virtually no exploration for finding new gas reserves and no investment has been made for the development of the gas fields, no new gas wells except a few by IOC, no new major pipelines has been added to the gas net work The investment that would be necessary to meet the demand of power and other sub sector would be about $8 billion dollar by the year 2011, as recommended by the international consultant in the Gas Sector Master Plan study. It appears to be an uphill task for the government alone to arrange such amount of investment from its own source.

The present pattern of gas consumption is limited to electricity, Fertilizer, Industrial, production of CNG, commercial and domestic customers. The major consumer is however the power sector followed by the Fertilizer, industries and others. Most of the districts head quarters in the eastern region have been brought under the gas network while only Pabna and Bogra in the western region is connected to the national gas grid.

Gas reserves has been a major issue of debate during the last few years Though different numbers have been mentioned by different quarter as there has been no attempt by the authority to appraise and evaluate the gas reservoir to ascertain the gas reserves in the country. Except some desk top studies with old data no attempt has been made to confirm the gas resources in the country. As a result unexpected phenomenon are propping up every now and then in the gas field operations. It may be mentioned that unless the gas reserves aspects are duly taken care of by the authorities, one fine morning the gas sector may face unpleasant surprise in terms of shutting down some major sources gas ahead of expected schedule.

Gas export continues to be a serious issue for the country. The IOCs operating or interested for investment in the country have been insisting that they should be allowed to export gas to India by pipeline from the gas fields in Bangladesh; which have been opposed by Bangladesh. As a result there were no major investments by the IOCs in Bangladesh to find out new gas fields, who considered the demand for gas in Bangladesh is meager to make major investment for hydrocarbon exploration. Bangladesh also failed to conduct seismic and geological survey to make bankable documents for bidding round for exploration blocks. Up dating of Production Sharing Contract (PSC) is a matter of urgency for making the IOCs interested for the country’s oil & gas exploration. Besides exploration, the huge need of investment in downstream activities in transmission and distribution system of gas network, the private investment could be the chosen source of financing

Bangladesh can ill afford the huge risk investment for exploration projects. It has also technical limitations in terms manpower, equipment and machinery needed to conduct meaningful exploration through its own resources. A rational approach would therefore be needed to dovetail the need of Bangladesh and the offers from aboard to explore and develop the gas resources in the country.

Petroleum products: 

Crude oil is imported by BPC, which is refined through ERL. The preset capacity of the Refinery is not adequate to meet the demand of POL in the country; as a result some finished products especially Diesel, Kerosene and LPG are imported. Petroleum products are marketed through the state owned distribution companies. But due to anomalies in the import prices of crude, finished products and retail prices of the same; BPC is incurring heavy losses every year. Only a few private companies in the lubricant marketing are working in the petroleum sector in the country.

Coal

There are known coal fields in the north western part of the country with an estimated reserve of about 3000 million tons of coal. Only one coal field at Barapukuria is active with an underground coal mine having a capacity of 1 million tons coal production for a mine mouth power station with a 250 MW generation capacity. Feasibility studies for coal fields in Phulabri and Khalashpir have been completed. The proposed open pit mining method at Phulabri has drawn heavy criticism from the public from environmental and social point of views, while the Khalashpir coal deposits may move forward with an underground mine for a 5 million to coal production by a local and Chinese joint venture in private sector. Government is working on a coal policy to make the sub sector more attractive to the investor. At the same time by products like Coal bed methane extraction and coal gasification also need to be examined by the authorities. There has been serious debate over method of coal mining in the recent years. 

Some people believe that under ground mining of coal though less productive would be best suited for the country to have balanced environmental and agricultural compromise, on the other hand some are forcefully arguing for open pit mining of coal which though appear to be catastrophic from the water, agricultural and resettlement of affected persons. However the scarcity of fuel may force the country to decide upon the optimum method of mining the known coal reserves based on techno economic justifications. Coal is therefore destined to replace the prime role of natural in Bangladesh in the years to come

Hydro

At the moment there is only one Hydro electricity project in Chittagong with about 200 MW capacities. This may be augmented by another 100 MW but the environmental issues for such expansion need to be examined further. Some studies have indicated that there are scopes for small irrigation cum electricity generation in small scale from run of the river flows in northern and Chittagong areas.

Peat

About 10 million tons of peat with a calorific value of 4000 Btu /pound can be extracted for power generation from Faridpur and Khulna region, subject to confirmation of no adverse impact on the ecology and environment in the region.

Biogas

There have been interesting efforts in the rural areas for production of biogas from cow dung and other animal wastes. These efforts need to be organized for a meaningful contribution to the energy need of the country.


Photo voltaic (PV)

Though less popularized, this has been a major contributor to the electrification of rural and remote areas of the country during the past few years. Thanks to a project of the World Bank, the people in the off grid areas are enjoying the benefits of PVs at a reasonable price and such efforts may multiply and could be an important source in electrification of the country.

IPS and small generator

Due to the poor quality of electricity supply, there have been a marked addition of small generators for houses, apartments, small industries; also there have been a booming business of providing Instant Power Supply (IPS) through storage batteries in the major towns of the country.


Coal & Associated Energy Sources

With the presently available information, it is almost certain that Coal is going to be a major source of fuel within a short time span in Bangladesh .It is not only the mining of solid coal and utilization of the same in the power stations, there are other associated fuel sources related to coal, no attention to which has yet been paid in there energy sector in the country, which would be of important considerations for the energy experts. It is therefore necessary to look into the various aspects of coal resource utilization, so that the best or optimum use of our coal resources could be ensured. Some of the probable uses of coal are given below:

Liquefaction

Coal can be converted into liquid fuels like gasoline or diesel by several different processes. The Fischer-Tropsch process of indirect synthesis of liquid hydrocarbons was used in Nazi Germany for many years and is today used by Sasol in South Africa. Coal would be gasified to make syngas (a balanced purified mixture of CO and H2 gas) and the syngas condensed using Fischer-Tropsch catalysts to make light hydrocarbons, which are further processed into gasoline and diesel. Syngas can also be converted to methanol, which can be used as a fuel, fuel additive, or further processed into gasoline via the Mobil M-gas process.

Coal liquefaction is one of the backstop technologies that could potentially limit escalation of oil prices and mitigate the effects of transportation energy shortage. Estimates are reported for sites in China where break-even cost for coal liquefaction may be in the range between 25 to 35 USD/barrel of oil.
This technology also works in converting coal to natural gas at a cost of $ 3 to $ 3.50 per mm Btu. Since current natural-gas prices in the US are roughly double that, it would appear that coal-to-gas is also an economically viable technology


Gasification

Coal gasification breaks down the coal into its components, usually by subjecting it to high temperature and pressure, using steam and measured amounts of oxygen. This leads to the production of syngas, a mixture mainly consisting of carbon monoxide (CO) and hydrogen (H2).
Gasification is also a possibility for future energy use, as the produced syngas can be cleaned-up relatively easily leading to cleaner burning than burning coal directly (the conventional way). The cleanliness of the cleaned-up syngas is comparable to natural gas enabling to burn it in a more efficient gas turbine rather than in a boiler used to drive a steam turbine. 



Underground Coal Gasification

The objective in underground gasification of coal is extraction fuel gasses or the production of synthesis gases by the partial or complete combustion of coal and water gas processing of the hot coke in place with oxygen, steam or their mixtures. To date a considerable number of field experiments as well as laboratory investigations on the underground gasification of coal have been carried out in many countries. Many experiments have proved that combustible gases can be produced by gasifying anthracite, bituminous coal and lignite with an air blast. Furthermore, gases of higher quality can be obtained by using oxygen-enriched air or a suitable mixture of air, oxygen and steam as gasification media.

The engineering of an underground gasification project includes the design of underground generators, the preparation of gasification paths, the qualitative and quantitative controls of the gasification process and the utilization of product gas. The underground gasification operation can be divided into two major steps, namely path preparation and gasification. Vertical or inclined boreholes are drilled from the surface to the coal bed, and a gasification path is prepared in the coal bed between the boreholes by a suitable linking process. The gasification process then is carried out by using the boreholes for the injection of gasification media and for the removal of gases, either by backward burning or forward burning. In the backward-burning system, the coal bed is ignited at the bottom of the outlet borehole, the intake air permeates through the coal bed unaffected by heat to the reactions zones and the gas formed flows through the carbonized and gasified zones towards the outlet. In the forward burning system, the coal bed is ignited at the bottom of the inlet borehole and the coal face burns toward the outlet borehole along the direction of air current. The increase of resistance to air and gas flow due to tar depositions in the gas-flow channel should be less significant in the backward-burning system.

UCG is conceptually very simple but the development of a working system has proved difficult in practice. The main problems are drilling the boreholes, controlling the reaction within the seam and producing a gas of a consistent and high quality.

The gasification of coal seams in situ was first developed in the former Soviet Union during the 1930’s and commercial-scale schemes have been operating since the Second World War; one project in Uzbekistan is still operating today. The same technology and technicians from Uzbekistan are currently operating a small trial scheme in Australia.

In the 1950’s, Britain embarked on its own long-term trial in shallow coal seams at Newman Spinney, Derbyshire, and although gasification was successful, the National Coal Board later abandoned the project for economic reasons.

US trials in the 1970 have proved the value of new technology from the oil and gas industry to control the process. These were followed up in Europe by studies, which concluded that the process was technically feasible in the thinner and deeper coal seams of Western Europe. This study led to the European trial of UCG in deep seams, which took place in Spain between 1992 and 1999. 


The European trial was the first to use in-seam directional drilling at depth to construct the production well and the trial demonstrated that UCG wells in deep seams could be successfully constructed. 

UCG is of growing interest in the largest coal producing countries, such as China and Australia, where new trials and supporting studies are underway. The prospect of international collaboration is growing
Selection of a site for UCG

The site for an underground coal gasification project should be able to accommodate three different trials, namely:
· A directional drilling trial to prove the accuracy and control of in-seam drilling.
· A sustained single channel gasification trial to monitor cavity development in long in-seam channels.
· A semi-commercial project to produce power in association with operators and industry.
The target is bituminous or sub-bituminous coal in seams of at least 2m thickness and at depths between 600 and 1200 m. 



Two different approaches are being looked at in China, one of which works by creating panels in existing mines from adjacent cross-cuts, while the second uses a pair of directionally drilled holes with the fire to be initiated between them., getting that initial connection may be rather difficult and long-term control of fire location gets to be rather tricky.

Coal Bed Methane 

The primary energy source of natural gas is a substance called methane (CH4). Coal bed methane (CBM) is simply methane found in coal seams. It is produced by non-traditional means, and therefore, while it is sold and used the same as traditional natural gas, its production is very different. CBM is generated either from a biological process as a result of microbial action or from a thermal process as a result of increasing heat with depth of the coal. Often a coal seam is saturated with water, with methane is held in the coal by water pressure. Currently, natural gas from coal beds accounts for approximately 7% of total natural gas production in the United States. 
Since CBM travels with ground water in coal seams, extraction of CBM involves pumping available water from the seam in order to reduce the water pressure that holds gas in the seam. CBM has very low solubility in water and readily separates as pressure decreases, allowing it to be piped out of the well separately from the water. Water moving from the coal seam to the well bore encourages gas migration toward the well.
CBM producers try not to dewater the coal seam, but rather seek to decrease the water pressure (or head of water) in the coal seam to just above the top of the seam. However, sometimes the water level drops into the coal seam. Water flows through fractures (or cleats) in the coal seam and if the cleat system is well developed and has enough water to pump and produce an economically viable and feasible water supply, the seam can be an aquifer.
Coal bed methane (CBM) is a comparatively new concept in extracting gas from the coal seams. In this process methane gas adsorbed in the coal cleats are forced out of the coal bed and collected through a number of horizontal wells. Such process provides a good source of natural gas in the coal bearing areas. In USA, UK. Africa, China and India CBM are being considered as a major source of fuel. In Bangladesh a small review was made by the British Geological Survey in 1996; but since then no field oriented effort has been made to ascertain the possibility of extracting CBM in this country. With the technological advancement in harnessing the CBM elsewhere, it is reasonable to believe that given due attention this source of fuel from coal seams in Northern Bangladesh could add to the energy reserves of Bangladesh.


Hot Water Within Coal Seam

Bangladesh coal seams are showing a peculiar trend of abnormal water temperature in and around the coal seams. Some times the temperature is becoming unbearable for the miners to work therein. The exact reason for such high temperature has not yet been identified for example in the Barapukuria Coal Mine. As the region has been marked by the International Geothermal Association as a probable hot spot area, which has been to some extent vetted by the higher temperature as recorded in the shaft sites drill holes in different mining locations, it could be a matter of interests if the hot water could be identified and measures taken for extracting hot water to the surface. Such water with higher temperature could be a source of power generation by heat engines, which would also help the miners for a better underground condition. The pumping of hot water from the underground could also be an added advantage for coal bed methane project in the same area.