The country fell into a gas crisis Friday afternoon as production from offshore Sangu field came to a sudden halt for “unknown” reasons, reports BDNEWS.

Officials at Petrobangla said supply from the gas field of Cairn Energy went off at about 5:30pm.

The sudden gas crisis compelled the authorities concerned to bring down the generation of Rauzan power plant to half of its capacity. Gas supply to Chittagong urea fertiliser factory was almost nil, sources said.

“To face the emergency, 90 MMCFD (million cubic feet gas per day) gas was being supplied to Chittagong from the national grid, but still the shortage in Chittagong was 70 MMCFD,” said a Petrobangla official.

Due to the supply from the national grid to Chittagong, capital Dhaka and its adjoining areas was also suffering from gas shortage.

Neither the state-run Petrobangla nor Scottish Cairn Energy could immediately detect the reason of the shut down of the country’s lone offshore gas field that had a rise in production recently.

A competent source said that experts of Cairn Energy are trying to fly into the platform of the gas field by helicopter.

With pressing two more wells into production from March 31 this year, Cairn took the production of the field to 160 MMCFD. Previously gas was being supplied from three wells of Sangu.

According to the Cairn Energy, another well of Sangu will come into production later this month.

Petrobangla officials said country’s present gas production capacity, including Sangu, is 1,505 MMCFD. However, production on Friday was 1,360 MMCFD as usually the demand on the holidays remains low.

A top official of Petrobangla told BDNEWS that it was unlikely to resume production and supply from Sangu by Friday night.