Dhaka (Platts)--22Nov2012/436 am EST/936 GMT

Fuel oil consumption in power plants in Bangladesh will more than double to around 800,000 mt in the first half of 2013 from around 320,000 mt in H1 2012, a senior official at Bangladesh Power Development Board said Thursday.

The expected spike in consumption is because of state-owned BPDB's plan to keep all oil-fired power plants operating, he said.

"2013 will be the country's election year for the national parliament and the government intends to generate electricity in full capacity to reduce public sufferings and ensure public mandate in next general election," said the official.

Currently fuel oil-fired power plants are running at 35% of capacity.

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The plan for H1 2013 is to run at 55%, the official said.

Bangladesh currently has 34 oil-fired power plants installed, of which 23 have a total capacity of 1.956 GW using high sulfur fuel oil.

Eleven plants with total capacity of 537 MW are gasoil-fired.

BPDB, the country's main electricity supplier, shut most of its oil-fired power plants in March as a cost-cutting measure when global oil prices hit year-to-date highs.

Bangladesh's overall electricity generation is currently around 5.5 GW against demand of over 7.5 GW.

--Mohammad Azizur Rahman, newsdesk@platts.com --Edited by Martin O'Rourke, martin_orourke@platts.com

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