Bangladesh buys more power from India, lifts fuel oil use as electricity demand risesBangladesh is boosting power imports from India and output from fuel oil-fired power plants in a scramble to meet rising electricity demand as it grapples with constraints on gas supply and coal plant maintenance, industry officials and analysts say. Natural gas accounted for about two-thirds of Bangladesh's power demand in the decade that ended in 2020, but the country has been boosting power imports and local coal-fired generation due to gas infrastructure challenges and to cut costs. A senior official of the Bangladesh Power Development Board (BPDB) said many gas-fired plants were not running at capacity because of pressure-related technical problems, while coal-fired power output was lower due to maintenance outages. "When power demand started increasing since March, they had to increase imports and fuel oil-based power generation," said Shafiqul Alam, a Bangladesh-based analyst at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis. Still, gas-fired power generation fell 1.2 percent, according to government data.
