Bangladesh's deepening gas crisis is pushing CNG filling station owners to the financial edge, with low gas pressure slashing sales to less than half at most outlets across the country, local media reported on Thursday, 6 August. Owners are now dipping into personal funds to cover staff wages, electricity and water bills, rent, and other operating costs — with employee jobs increasingly at risk.

How Bad the Numbers Are

The financial strain is compounded by a razor-thin margin structure. Of the 18 per cent profit margin fixed by the government, nearly 14 per cent is consumed by electricity bills alone, leaving just 4 per cent to cover salaries and all other operational expenses. Under normal supply conditions, that margin is barely workable. Under the current shortage, it has become untenable.

Daily gas supply across Bangladesh has fallen from roughly 2.65 billion cubic feet to approximately 2.13–2.14 billion cubic feet following the crisis — a drop of over half a billion cubic feet per day.

What Station Managers Are Saying

Md. Shah Alam, manager of Purbachal Filling Station, described the bind directly: 'The staff's salaries and station expenses are paid from the income from gas sales. But gas is not being sold because the pressure is low. The staff have to be paid while they are sitting. If this crisis lasts long, there will be no choice but to lay off employees.'

Mahesh Roy, general manager of Best Eastern CNG filling station, echoed the concern: 'We have 27 staff at our station. Most of them are sitting now because they are not working. The big question now is how long the owner will keep them like this and pay their salaries. If sales decrease further, there will be no option but to lay off the employees.'

Root Cause: FSRU Fire at Cox's Bazar

The crisis traces back to a fire at a floating storage and regasification unit (FSRU) in Cox's Bazar on 21 July, which damaged one of its two boilers and forced the facility to shut down. The terminal belongs to US company Accelerate Energy and had been supplying more than 1.1 billion cubic feet of LNG daily to the national grid — a significant share of the country's total gas supply.

The Accelerate Energy FSRU has since partially reopened, with limited LNG supply resuming to the national grid on Wednesday evening. However, a shortage of LNG cargoes is expected to persist until at least 20 August, keeping full restoration out of reach for now, according to reports citing Bangladeshi daily Jugantor.

Wider Industrial Impact

The gas shortfall has rippled well beyond CNG stations. Production disruptions have been reported across nearly all industrial sectors in Bangladesh, with several industries reportedly on the verge of closure. Employees at filling stations have voiced frustration that effective government intervention has yet to materialise. This comes amid a broader pattern of energy vulnerability in Bangladesh, where LNG imports have become central to meeting industrial and domestic demand — and where a single infrastructure failure can cascade rapidly across the economy.

With the LNG cargo gap unlikely to close before late August, the pressure on CNG operators — and the workers they employ — is expected to intensify before it eases.