Chattogram gas supplies resume after three days

Natural gas supplies have resumed in Chattogram after a three-day outage caused by a rupture of pipe line.

The repair work on the pipe line, damaged in a canal digging operation on Saturday, was completed around 1:00 am Tuesday, said Khayej Ahmed Mazumder, the managing director of Karnaphuli Gas Distribution Company Limited (KGDLC).

Gas supplies to different parts of the port city gradually returned to normal afterwards.

A large section of the metropolitan area and the EPZ were left without natural gas supply since Saturday evening.

The Chattogram City Corporation’s canal digging operation in the EPZ’s Akmal Ali Road caused the accident in the wee hours of Saturday. Workers dropped a piling hook onto a 24-inch thick supply line which knocked a two-inch hole into the gas pipe.

The damage to the pipeline had affected the supply to the Chattogram EPZ, the Karnaphuli EPZ, the 60 MW United Power private power plant and the city’s Halishahar, Patenga, Port, Agrabad, Sadarghat, Phiringi Bazar, Andarkilla, Hem Sen Lane, Jamal Khan, Chiragi Pahar and various other areas.

Residents faced great difficulties cooking and performing other household tasks due to the outage. Stovetops in many houses remained unlit as residents resorted to cooking in clay stoves or buying food from restaurants during the outage.