The phantom megawatts
To dismiss Bangladesh’s recurring energy paralysis as the unlucky byproduct of a damaged offshore floating storage and regasification unit (FSRU) or a delayed liquefied natural gas (LNG) tanker is to confuse symptom with disease. A blaze at Excelerate Energy’s terminal off Moheshkhali, stripping 450 million cubic feet per day (mmcfd) of natural gas from the grid, was certainly a catalyst.
But it was not the underlying cause. The crisis engulfing the national economy is structural, chronic, and entirely self-inflicted. Bangladesh spent a decade indulging in a dangerous illusion: that building power plants was synonymous with achieving energy security.
On paper, the balance sheet looks robust. The Power Division’s data shows an installed capacity of 33,092 MW. Yet, on peak days, actual peak production struggles to breach 17,201 MW. Tens of thousands of megawatts exist only in official press releases. When the heat rises and factories hum, those phantom megawatts vanish.
Power plants without fuel are not economic assets; they are expensive, idle liabilities. They generate massive capacity-payment obligations to private operators while failing to deliver a single kilowatt-hour to the grid.
The arithmetic of the gas sector lays bare the policy failure. Daily national demand sits between 3,800 and 4,000 mmcfd, against a standard grid supply of roughly 2,600 mmcfd. When the Moheshkhali terminal went offline, the deficit metastasised into panic. Power plants received just 945.1 mmcfd against a minimum requirement of 2,524.9 mmcfd—a paltry 37.4% fulfillment rate.
Over two dozen power stations ground to a halt or throttled output. Households were left without gas to cook, while textile mills, fertilizer plants, and compressed natural gas stations engaged in a brutal zero-sum competition for a rapidly diminishing supply. When the imported LNG lifeline snaps, the entire domestic economy shudders.
Other emerging markets have confronted similar reckonings, but unlike Bangladesh, they extracted policy lessons from their suffering. Consider Chile. In 2007, a devastating combination of severe drought, which crippled its hydro power, and a sudden halt in natural gas imports from Argentina pushed the Andean nation to the precipice of an energy collapse. Rather than nursing its grievances, Santiago embarked on a radical diversification drive.
It constructed twin LNG receiving terminals at Quintero and Mejillones, breaking its reliance on a single transit route and single supplier. Bangladesh, by contrast, tethered its industrial expansion to a fragile, under-resourced LNG import setup with zero meaningful redundancy.
Japan offers an equally instructive playbook on crisis management. Following the 2011 Fukushima catastrophe, Tokyo lost its entire nuclear fleet virtually overnight. To stave off systemic collapse, the government turned transparency into a public utility.
Japan rolled out real-time energy dashboards across national television, digital networks, and public transit hubs, giving citizens granular daily visibility into peak demand and grid stress. Bangladesh’s energy bureaucracy prefers obscurity.
Citizens are treated to contradictory press releases attributing blackouts to everything from delayed coal unloader vessels to unseasonal rainfall. Transparency cannot generate gas, but it builds public trust and enforces administrative discipline.
Brazil demonstrated that managing demand requires economic sophistication rather than crude mandates. Confronted with a catastrophic drought in 2001 that sapped its hydroelectric capacity, Brasilia avoided sweeping blackouts by deploying dynamic price signals. Households and businesses were subjected to target-based quotas backed by punitive surcharges for overconsumption and cash rebates for verified savings.
Consumption plummeted without destroying economic growth. Bangladesh, by comparison, relies on blunt instruments: ordering shopping malls to douse their lights at 8:00 PM or imposing arbitrary regional load-shedding. Real demand management requires time-of-use tariffs, smart metering infrastructure, and structured industrial load shifting.
South Africa’s agonizing history with load-shedding highlights the perils of institutional rot—and the path out. Its state utility, Eskom, spent years bogged down by corruption and failing power stations. Relief only materialized when South Africa embraced systemic reform through its Energy Action Plan: unbundling the state monopoly, accelerating private investment, lifting regulatory barriers on rooftop solar, and integrating utility-scale battery storage. By early 2026, South Africa recorded hundreds of consecutive days without blackouts.
Bangladesh’s energy strategy has failed across five distinct fronts:
First, an obsessive focus on plant construction blinded planners to fuel logistics. Gas fields were allowed to deplete while domestic exploration stalled beneath bureaucratic inertia, leaving the country dependent on volatile spot-market LNG.
Second, domestic exploration was neglected. Production-sharing contracts, workover operations, and offshore bidding were treated with leisurely indifference.
Third, financial indiscipline has crippled the supply chain. By early 2026, unpaid bills to power producers and foreign suppliers swelled to Tk 52,300 crore ($4.3 billion). A sector buried under arrears cannot secure credit or guarantee fuel cargoes.
Fourth, renewable energy remains a peripheral afterthought. As of early 2025, grid-connected solar and wind accounted for a meager 3.6% of power generation. Renewables may not solve the evening peak, but they offset daytime gas usage, conserve foreign exchange reserves, and power agricultural irrigation.
Fifth, information is withheld. Mismanaging electricity supply is a failure of technical planning; hiding the shortfall behind bureaucratic platitudes is a failure of governance.
The public expected post-reform administration to dismantle the legacy of opaque contracts, crony capacity payments, and systemic secrecy. Yet the response to the recent gas crunch looks suspiciously like the old regime's habits.
The remedy is clear: a comprehensive audit of all capacity contracts, aggressive investment in domestic gas fields, diversified import routes, expanded rooftop solar integration, and open, honest communication with the electorate.
Megawatts without fuel, contracts without oversight, and terminals without redundancy will not keep the factory assembly lines moving. Bangladesh’s power crisis is no longer a technical bottleneck. It is a fundamental test of governance—one that the state is currently failing.
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Abrer Mohsin Samin is a Political Analyst & Research Engineer based in Alabama, USA