After disruption in production at factories, the power, energy and mineral resources ministry has alerted citizens to possible electricity outages in some areas because of a gas crisis.

A notice on the ministry’s Facebook page on Saturday evening said a technical glitch has led to disruption in supply from a floating liquified natural gas or LNG terminal at Maheshkhali in Cox’s Bazar.

The shortage has caused disruption in power generation at some gas-run plants, the ministry said.

In this situation, some areas may experience power cuts for a very short time, it said and apologised for the inconvenience.

Reports of power cuts in the rural areas had started coming before the ministry made the announcement.

The country experienced a shortage of around 700 megawatt of electricity on Saturday afternoon even during winter, when the demand is low with customers avoiding fans and air-conditioners.

The power plants produced 8,926 MW of electricity against a demand for 9,640 MW at 2pm.

Production at the gas-run power plants almost halved to 2,900 MW at the time.

Zakir Hossain, a resident of Sonapur in Noakhali, lamented that they do not get undisrupted power in any season.

“We started getting electricity without any cuts for some days in winter, but that has stopped again.

“The power cuts are as frequent as in summer. We are experiencing three to four outages a day. And it takes half an hour to one hour for the supply to resume,” he said

Amid the crisis, long queues are formed at the CNG refuelling stations, while production at factories has fallen.

Petrobangla has stopped providing daily gas supply data since the glitch.

According to the last report on Jan 17, 2,539 MMcf gas was supplied against a demand for 4,000 MMcf.

Earlier, the supply was at least 3,000 MMcf.