CUFL, the largest state-owned fertiliser factory in the country, would suffer a loss in production of 70,000 tons of urea worth around Tk 35 crore in the first four months of the current fiscal following the dearth of gas supply since the first week of September.

The factory suffered a production loss of around 35,000 tons of urea this month.

The factory resumed its production last week after gas supply was restored at a very limited scale on October 16. Gas supply was suspended on September 30.

Since the factory began start-up process with supply of 13 million Cubic Feet (Cft) gas as against the daily requirement of 50 million Cft, it had to wait until October 22 to go for full production, sources said.

“The factory can now produce on an average daily 1680 tons of urea as against its capacity of 1700 tons,” said CUFL General Manager (Operations) Shahidur Rahman.

But after suffering production loss of around 70,000 tons since July, it will be difficult for the CUFL to achieve its annual target of five lakh tons for the current financial year, Shahid said.

Since its operation in 1987, the CUFL factory faced such a situation in 1992-93 FY when production remained suspended for around nine months, he said.

The factory suspended the production on September 6 in the current fiscal year when Bakharabad Gas Supply Limited (BGSL) abruptly stopped supply to both CUFL and Kafco due to non-availability of gas at the offshore gas field of Sangu that tripped at around 6:30pm on the same evening.

Gas supply was restored to CUFL and Karnaphuli Fertiliser Company (Kafco) at 10:30am and 9:30am respectively on September 7.

But, after the total suspension of production it took three more days to go for full production, said the sources.

Production at the CUFL factory came to an abrupt halt once again when the pressure of gas in the supply line drastically came down to 37 million Cft at around 9:15am on September 18.

The factory resumed operation at 5:30pm on September 19 only to be shut down at around 7:30am the next day (September 20).

The gas supply rose above 80 per cent of the usual flow to enable CUFL to begin start-up in the next morning of September 21.

But, since then poor supply had been hampering production at CUFL until the gas supply was suspended there on September 30.

CUFL produces urea at a maximum production cost of around Tk 6000 per ton and having a subsidy ranging from Tk 900 to 1200 while it sells the fertiliser at Tk 4800 per ton at the mill gate.

On the other hand, the government has to purchase urea from the adjoining Kafco at the international market price at as high as 273 US dollar (equivalent to around Tk 18,500) per ton, sources said.

As such, the circles concerned demanded gas supply to the state-owned fertiliser factory on a priority basis.