Production at CUFL suspended

Production at Chittagong Urea Fertiliser Company Limited was suspended for an indefinite period on Thursday evening due to non supply of gas.
The country’s biggest fertiliser factory suspended production at 7.45 PM on March 17, CUFL sources said.
They said that due to acute gas crisis, the government decided to suspend gas supply to CUFL and divert it to Power Development Board’s gas fired power plants.
The objective, they said, was to improve power supply in summer.
Suspension of production at CUFL would enable the government to divert the gas supply to the power plants, said officials.
Residents said that they expected power supply to improve and the nagging load shedding in the port city to go following the latest government move.
Entrepreneurs said that their losses were piling up as several industries and factories they ha set up in the port city could not go into production for long due to an acute shortage of gas supply.
A number of gas fired power plants in Chittagong also remained out of production due to non supply of gas, said energy officials.
Officials said that CUFL had been suffering losses n recent years as its annual output dropped to 1.50 lakh tonnes from six lakh tonnes due to inadequate and erratic supply of gas.
They also said that various costly equipment of CUFL, including its turbine generator, heat exchanger, reformers and the urea reactor sustained damage due to corrosion.
They said that the fertiliser factory got only a fraction of 51 million cubic feet of gas it needed to remain in full production.
Read the original story on the daily New Age