Where Bangladesh's LNG Actually Comes Ashore, Not at Chittagong's Jetties
Two offshore FSRUs at Moheshkhali handle the country's gas imports through ship-to-ship transfer, well outside the Karnaphuli.
LNG carriers calling Bangladesh don't go anywhere near the Karnaphuli jetties, which surprises people who assume all shipping traffic funnels through Chattogram proper. The country's gas import infrastructure sits offshore Moheshkhali Island near Cox's Bazar, roughly 5 kilometres out in the Bay of Bengal, specifically because that location has the deep draft an FSRU and LNG carrier need that the Karnaphuli simply doesn't have. Current coal-jetty or offshore-energy operations must be kept separate from future commercial-terminal design capacity; confirm the intended facility and the latest project or terminal instruction before fixing a call.
Two FSRUs, one island, a lot of gas
Bangladesh currently runs two operational floating storage and regasification units off Moheshkhali. Excelerate Energy's MLNG terminal, the country's first, commissioned in 2018, now regasifies up to 600 million cubic feet a day after a capacity bump from its original 500 mmcfd. Summit Group runs the second, the Summit LNG Terminal, online since April 2019 at a similar scale. Between them they cover a meaningful share of a national gas demand that's been outrunning domestic production for years now, Bangladesh's own gas fields can't keep up, and LNG imports have had to fill the gap since 2018.
How the offload actually works
This isn't a jetty operation. LNG carriers arriving from Qatar and elsewhere transfer their cargo ship-to-ship directly into the FSRU at the offshore mooring. Attendance and agency coordination for that call still depend on confirmed facility, operator and vessel assignment rather than a standing CPA open berth, Excelerate's FSRU alone passed its 100th STS transfer back in 2021 (historical milestone; confirm current operating status with the facility operator). From the FSRU, gas moves ashore through a subsea pipeline, Summit's planned second unit specified a roughly 5 km, 24-inch line laid at 5 metres depth, and into the national gas grid from there. A carrier never actually touches Bangladeshi soil; the whole exchange happens vessel-to-vessel in open water.
The supply side isn't fully settled yet
Worth knowing if you're tracking the medium-term picture: a planned third FSRU from Summit, which would have added another 600 mmcfd, had agreements cancelled by the interim government in late 2024 over non-compliance with conditions precedent (confirm any later reinstatement or replacement project against current public notices), and Summit has since contested that cancellation. A separate proposed FSRU project was scrapped around the same time. None of this affects current operations at Moheshkhali, but it does mean Bangladesh's LNG import capacity is staying roughly where it is for now rather than expanding as quickly as the earlier master plan assumed, and that has knock-on effects for how tight scheduling gets at the two existing units during peak demand months.
Cyclone risk is not theoretical here
Cyclone Remal damaged Excelerate's FSRU in May 2024 badly enough that the vessel had to sail to a shipyard in Southeast Asia for repairs, taking the terminal offline for roughly two months during peak season (2024 event; do not treat as a standing seasonal rule). The Bay of Bengal cyclone season, broadly April through June and again in October-November, is a genuine operational risk for offshore moorings in a way it isn't for vessels safely alongside a jetty. Anyone agenting or chartering an LNG carrier into this route needs the BMD cyclone signal system built into voyage planning, not treated as background weather.
What this means for an agent's role
CPA's broader remit covers vessel agency across the Chittagong region, and that includes coordination for gas carriers transiting toward Moheshkhali even though the physical operation sits outside the harbour limits, port clearance, customs documentation for the cargo, and liaison with Petrobangla/RPGCL on the receiving end all still run through a Bangladesh-based agent. It's a different operational picture from a container or bulk call, but the paperwork and clearance obligations don't disappear just because the vessel never enters the river.
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