Bangladesh News

Many CNG-run motor vehicles are believed to be fitted with cylinders that have a high risk of exploding as those were either not built for compressed natural gas (CNG) or their integrity was not timely verified.

There is no active measure as yet from the government to verify the fitness of the CNG cylinders, according to Society for Urban Environmental Protection (SUEP), an NGO. It claimed 18 accidents related to CNG cylinders left at least 17 people dead since January 2007.

“Counterfeit CNG cylinders and cylinders that have not been verified for integrity every five years, as required, are dangerous,” said SUEP General Secretary Akhtar Hossain Babu.

Unfortunately, in many cases in Bangladesh vehicle owners are not awake to the periodic need to verify their cylinders and the risk of using sub-standard or counterfeit cylinders. Some drivers in connivance with automobile workshops are replacing original cylinders with sub-standard ones, the NGO said.

The CNG cylinders that have guarantees for 15 to 20 years have to be brought in every five years for a check up by Rupantorito Prakritik Gas Company Ltd (RPGCL) or by the CNG conversion workshops the company designated.

The workshops verify cylinders’ integrity, submit reports and give new dates for checkups but there is no authority to monitor if the CNG-run vehicles plying on the streets are following the instructions or have fit cylinders, businessmen concerned said.

There are many unauthorised CNG conversion workshops that do not follow proper procedures in converting vehicle fuel system, said Navana CNG Ltd General Manager Sumit Kumar Saha.

“Oxygen and other gas cylinders are used for CNG-run vehicles and the genuine cylinders are not maintained properly… all these add up to high risk of explosions of cylinders endangering lives,” he told The Daily Star.

According to him, half the CNG conversion workshops are unauthorised but the government does not monitor conversion workshops or if the cylinders had the periodic checkups.

Bangladesh CNG Filling Station and Conversion Owners’ Association Vice-president Manoranjan Bhakta, however, said there is a small chance of genuine CNG cylinders exploding even if they had no periodic checkups.

“The performance will drop but surely all cylinders must be timely verified for integrity for safety reasons,” he added.

He said he has doubts whether the around 10,000 CNG-run autorickshaws that were imported from India in 2001 had their cylinders verified. He said it was an alarming issue.

He said in 2001 the RPGCL converted around 1,500 vehicles for running on CNG while private workshops converted around 100 vehicles. The use of CNG as automobile fuel started in Bangladesh in 1985 but it became popular in 2001. Now, there are over 1 lakh motor vehicles running on CNG, he claimed.

Referring to a CNG cylinder explosion in Narsingdi where three people died, Akhtar Hossain Babu of SUEP said 87 percent of the cylinders that exploded had faulty designs or were sub-standard counterfeit cylinders.

The placement of cylinders in vehicles is sometimes incorrect which increases the risk of an explosion when the vehicle had a small bump. The issue must be addressed, he said, adding, “Each cylinder blast has the power of a 500-pound bomb and can cause serious damage.”

Even though RPGCL is responsible for licensing the CNG conversion workshops and monitoring and supervising their work, it never goes to the workshops to see if they were working properly or fitting correct kits to vehicles, he claimed.

RPGCL Director (operations) Shafiqul Islam said a discussion is going on between the ministries of communications and energy on how to monitor CNG cylinders.

Engineer Humayun Rashid Khalifa, director of Bangladesh Road Transport Authority (BRTA) that checks vehicle fitness every year, said they do not check the CNG cylinders.

“In a meeting with RPGCL, we asked it to provide officials at major CNG conversion workshops to monitor their activities,” he said.