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Energy Relief Arrives, But the Import Bill Keeps Climbing

Industries struggling with gas shortages should see real relief from this evening. LNG supply is expected to rise to 950–1,000 million cubic feet per day (mmcfd), up from 764 mmcfd recorded at 4pm yesterday, after a technical fault that had disrupted ship-to-ship LNG transfer since July was finally repaired. The development emerged from a meeting between Prime Minister Tarique Rahman and business leaders at the Secretariat yesterday (14 September), where the PM’s office said gas supply to industries would return to its previous level by tonight.

The same meeting produced a bigger structural development: Chevron has agreed to drill new wells in a joint venture with state-run Bapex, reversing its earlier position that it would not undertake such joint drilling. PM’s Adviser Mahdi Amin said work is under way to drill roughly 150 gas wells, with plans for land-based LNG terminals and a third floating storage and regasification unit (FSRU) targeted for December 2027. Business leaders also said the government has released Tk6,000 crore of the Tk14,000 crore owed to furnace-oil power plants, which are currently generating only 3,000–3,500MW against a combined capacity of 5,637MW. (Source: The Business Standard)

But the cost side of the story is moving in the opposite direction. Bangladesh is now paying almost $30 per million British thermal units (MMBtu) for spot-market LNG — nearly three times what it typically paid before the Middle East war. The Cabinet Committee on Government Purchase approved an LNG cargo from Singapore’s Vitol Asia at $29.795/MMBtu and another from UK-based TotalEnergies at $28.95/MMBtu, both scheduled for October delivery. At roughly Tk123 to the dollar, each cargo now costs about Tk1,200 crore. Petrobangla has leaned harder on the volatile spot market after at least eight direct-procurement cargoes missed their scheduled August arrival, and the Iran war has already added an estimated Tk10,600 crore to the country’s FY26 LNG subsidy burden. (Source: The Daily Star)

National power supply also remains tight. A technical fault forced a unit of the 1,320MW Rampal coal-fired plant offline, dropping its output below 600MW just as Adani Power’s Godda plant in India resynchronised with Bangladesh’s grid after its own three-day outage, with supply there climbing from 758MW to over 1,400MW through the day — a net wash for total national capacity. Separately, on the sidelines of the IAEA’s General Conference in Vienna, Bangladesh and Russia’s Rosatom agreed to accelerate construction of the Rooppur Nuclear Power Plant so it can begin feeding the national grid. (Source: The Business Standard)

The takeaway for Dhaka businesses: physical gas and power supply is genuinely easing this week, a real near-term win for gas-starved factories. But the underlying import bill is getting worse, not better — and that gap between easing physical supply and a rising cost base is the context against which this week’s stock market slide and the Federal Reserve’s rate decision should both be read.

Economy Watch

• USD/BDT: 123.17 spot; interbank range 123.16–123.20, as of 14 September 5:00pm close (Source: Bangladesh Bank, subject to a 1–2 day publishing lag)
• Yuan/BDT: 18.35–18.36 bid rate, 14 September (Source: Bangladesh Bank)
• DSEX: closed at 5,379.00 on 14 September, down 39.55 points (-0.73%) from 5,418.55 — the fifth consecutive losing session and a three-month low, independently confirmed by The Business Standard’s own reporting (Source: DSE, cross-checked)
• Inflation (CPI): 8.26% year-on-year in August 2026, down from 8.32% in July; food inflation eased to 7.02% while non-food inflation rose to 9.32% (Source: Bangladesh Bureau of Statistics)
• Policy (Repo) Rate: 9.50%, after Bangladesh Bank cut it by 50 basis points from 10% effective 2 August — its first monetary easing in six years (Source: Bangladesh Bank)
• Bad Loans (Gross NPL ratio): 32.26% as of March 2026, the latest published quarterly figure, after peaking near 36% in September 2025 (Source: Bangladesh Bank)
• GDP Growth Target: Bangladesh Bank has set a 6.5% GDP growth target for FY27, aligned with the national budget (Source: Bangladesh Bank Monetary Policy Statement)
• Foreign Exchange Reserves: $36.42 billion gross ($31.60 billion on a BPM6 basis) as of July 2026 (Source: Bangladesh Bank)
• Gold (22K, per bhori): Tk232,930, unchanged since BAJUS’s 12 September revision (Source: BAJUS)
• Remittance (FY27 to date): $7.253 billion between 1 July and 13 September, up 16.9% from $6.206 billion in the same period last year; a single day (13 September) brought in $193 million (Source: BSS / Bangladesh Bank)

Global Signal

Oil markets remain elevated on the Hormuz standoff. Brent crude traded at $106.80/bbl (+1.04%) and WTI at $102.60 (+1.14%) as of this morning, according to live pricing from oilprice.com. The Strait of Hormuz has been effectively closed to routine commercial shipping since 28 February, and a vessel was struck near Limah, Oman on 13 September. Talks between Gulf states and Iran on a temporary shipping arrangement have stalled — this is the direct driver behind Bangladesh’s near-$30/MMBtu spot LNG bill described above.

The US Federal Reserve meets today and tomorrow. The federal funds target range currently holds at 3.50%–3.75%, but markets are now pricing in a 25-basis-point hike as oil-driven inflation persists — a reversal from earlier expectations of a cut. A Fed hike would add pressure to emerging-market currencies, the taka included. Wall Street closed softer ahead of the decision: the Dow fell 0.29% to 52,421.20, the S&P 500 fell 0.48% to 7,619.98, and the Nasdaq fell 0.56% to 26,186.41 (Source: Google Finance). Bitcoin traded around $77,700, down from recent highs as rate-hike expectations build.

Gaza and Israel-Lebanon ceasefires remain fragile but technically hold, with Israel controlling roughly 60% of Gaza and disputes over Hamas’s disarmament unresolved; sporadic strikes continue in Lebanon. These fronts carry no direct trade impact for Bangladesh but remain part of the broader regional risk premium keeping oil elevated.

Closer to home, India exported roughly 500 tonnes of hilsa to Bangladesh for the first time — a modest but symbolically notable trade opening, even as Dhaka opted not to attend this year’s BRICS summit in New Delhi.

AI This Week: Practical Intelligence

Anthropic’s Dario Amodei, OpenAI’s Sam Altman, and Elon Musk have jointly called for AI development to slow down over safety concerns — an unusual show of public agreement among rival AI labs, coming after a string of security incidents involving AI agents. Critics have noted the timing is convenient, arriving alongside continued aggressive product releases and, in Anthropic’s case, an IPO process.

Separately, and more immediately actionable for Dhaka teams: “ClickFix” attacks are spreading rapidly. These attacks display a fake CAPTCHA or “verification” prompt on compromised or fraudulent websites (a recent wave used compromised HBO Max advertising accounts on Reddit) that tricks the user into copy-pasting a command into their own Windows Command Prompt or Mac Terminal — instantly installing password- and crypto-wallet-stealing malware. Because the user runs the malicious code themselves, these attacks bypass most antivirus tools.

Practical takeaway: don’t read the AI “slowdown” talk as a reason to delay adoption at your organisation — treat it as a prompt to formalise an internal AI usage policy instead. More urgent this week is a two-minute staff briefing: never copy-paste “fix” instructions into a Terminal or Command Prompt from a browser pop-up. IT teams managing a Windows fleet should consider restricting PowerShell and Command Prompt access for non-technical staff.

ORAWEK Note

Every energy story this week reads the same way twice — relief in the headline, a bigger bill in the paragraph below it. Gas is coming back tonight; we’re paying triple for it. That gap between “supply is easing” and “cost is not” is the real story for anyone running a business in Dhaka right now, and it’s worth budgeting for accordingly rather than celebrating the headline alone.

— ORAWEK

ORAWEK (ভোরের সংক্ষেপ) is a free weekday morning business intelligence digest for Bangladesh’s business, finance, and policy professionals. Business. Economy. AI. In 300 words or less. Free forever, zero spam.