Enough gas to keep 30 lakh kitchen burners alight for an entire year went up in smoke as system losses in fiscal year 2024-25.

In FY25, the country wasted around 1,796 million cubic metres (mmcm) of gas, equivalent to Tk 4,107 crore based on the current average retail price.

In Bangladesh, system loss in gas distribution refers to theft and illegal connections, leaks from old pipelines, damage during maintenance, metering errors, and mismanagement.

The scale of loss in FY25 alone could fund the drilling of nearly 20 new gas wells or the construction of two to three power plants with a combined capacity of 400 to 500 megawatts.

The authorities have taken several measures to reduce these losses, yet official data since FY21 show a rising curve.

The Bangladesh Energy Regulatory Commission (BERC) allows a maximum system loss of 2 percent, but it stood at around 7 percent of the average daily supply of 2,526 million cubic feet (mmcfd) in FY25.

Currently, about 174 mmcfd of gas is being lost every day. The waste comes at a time when households struggle to cook three meals a day and industries face reduced production due to scant gas supply.

The volume of unaccounted gas was 1,597 mmcm in FY24, while it was 979 mmcm in FY23. Each year, the losses translate into thousands of crores of taka in wasted national resources.

At a recent event, Fouzul Kabir Khan, adviser to the Ministry of Power, Energy and Mineral Resources, expressed frustration over the government's efforts to reduce system losses.

"Illegal gas lines are being set up immediately after the drives end and pipelines are evicted," he said at a programme at Bidyut Bhaban in Dhaka.

Of the six state-owned gas distributors, Titas Gas reported the highest system loss in terms of volume, reaching 9.47 percent in FY25 compared with 7.67 percent a year earlier, according to preliminary data from Petrobangla.

Titas, which supplies gas to Dhaka and Mymensingh divisions, lost an estimated Tk 3,000 crore to system loss last fiscal year.

Titas officials said illegal connections are rampant in Dhaka and in industrial belts across Narayanganj, Savar, Gazipur and Munshiganj. The monitoring teams conduct regular drives to cut these lines, but the overall impact has been little.

Titas disconnected around 1.16 lakh illegal household lines and 576 commercial and industrial connections in FY25, a decline from 2.19 lakh and 683, respectively, the previous year.

A company official said anti-theft drives slowed for a couple of months, affecting the total number of disconnections.

The Daily Star approached Shahnewaz Parvez, managing director of Titas Gas Transmission and Distribution PLC, for comment. However, he was not available. 

Earlier, Parvez told The Daily Star that the company's top priority was to reduce system loss by removing illegal connections and replacing old, leaking pipelines.

While Titas recorded the highest losses in volume, Bakhrabad Gas Distribution Company Limited topped the list in percentage terms.

Bakhrabad lost 9.8 percent of its allocated gas, worth about Tk 600 crore, in FY25. The company supplies gas across 35 upazilas in Cumilla, Chandpur, Brahmanbaria, Feni, Noakhali and Lakshmipur.

Md Fazley Alam, managing director of Bakhrabad, said the situation has started to improve, as losses reduced to 6 percent by September this year.

"Most of the pipelines in Brahmanbaria were installed at least 50 years ago," said Alam. "There is huge leakage in the distribution system... the situation will improve if those are replaced or repaired."

He added that many residents in the region feel entitled to take gas illegally because several gas fields are located there. "We need to change such a mentality to use national resources illegally," he added.

According to Petrobangla data, the six distributors collectively disconnected more than 96,000 household lines, 541 industrial and commercial connections in the January-August period of this year.

It also removed 197 kilometres of illegal pipelines nationwide. Petrobangla also identified and repaired over 25,000 leaks in the network.

According to official data, there are about 43 lakh household gas users under the six distributors. New residential connections have remained suspended since 2009, as the return on such supplies is lower than for industrial and commercial users.

The Daily Star tried to contact Md Rezanur Rahman, chairman of Petrobangla, for comment, but he was unavailable despite several phone calls.