Operating 5.3 kilometers off the coast of Bangladesh, Summit Group manages one of the country’s most critical yet invisible pieces of infrastructure. While the floating storage and regasification unit bobs visibly on the surface, beneath the waters of the Bay of Bengal lies $135 million worth of subsea equipment that supplies nearly 13% of Bangladesh’s natural gas.
“We have a huge amount of investment under the sea,” explains Sayedul Alam, managing director of Summit LNG Terminal Company. The infrastructure includes complex pipeline systems, mooring equipment, and specialized connectors that must function despite extreme conditions.
The Bay of Bengal presents unique operational challenges that would test any maritime engineering team. Ocean currents reach speeds of 5.5 knots, powerful enough to make routine maintenance dangerous for divers. Visibility underwater is often poor, complicated further by sediment flows from the Ganges-Brahmaputra delta system. Weather patterns create an extraordinarily compressed operational window—out of 12 months, severe conditions limit maintenance work to just four months annually.
“Almost eight months in a year you would find this weather very unfavorable for doing any subsea maintenance,” Alam notes. “You’ll find a couple of cyclones in a year and may be four to five large storms coming in a year.”
Navigating Monsoons and Maintenance Windows
For Summit Group, the technical requirements for maintaining this infrastructure exceed local capabilities, creating a window of extensive collaboration with international service providers. Bangladesh is still developing a competent offshore support industry, meaning specialized services are often sourced from Singapore or Thailand. Dynamic positioning vessels, offshore divers, and specialized maintenance equipment all come from abroad, which can multiply costs by five to ten times compared to markets with established offshore sectors.
Weather monitoring becomes paramount during cyclone season. The facility must disconnect and move to safer waters when storms approach, then reconnect quickly once conditions improve. Each disconnection and reconnection requires careful coordination with multiple stakeholders including Petrobangla, the national oil and gas company, and Rupantarita Prakritik Gas Company Limited (RPGCL), which manages the RLNG value chain.
The compressed maintenance window forces Summit Group to maximize efficiency during favorable months. Underwater inspection teams work intensively during the November to February period when seas calm sufficiently for diving operations. Preventive maintenance schedules must account for the impossibility of emergency repairs during monsoon months, requiring redundancy in critical systems.
International Partnerships and Technical Excellence
Summit Group’s partnership with Mitsubishi Corporation, which has a 25% equity stake in the LNG terminal operating company, helps bring additional technical knowledge and operational standards. The Japanese conglomerate’s involvement delivers decades of global experience in the energy sector and access to international best practices.
PSA Marine Singapore, one of the world’s largest marine logistics companies, serves as the port service provider, adding another layer of operational expertise.
The FSRU itself employs technology that converts liquefied natural gas back to its gaseous state (RLNG) for downstream pipeline distribution. Ships carrying LNG from around the world, including Qatar and Oman, dock alongside the floating facility, where the super-cooled liquid undergoes regasification before entering Bangladesh’s national gas grid. The terminal requires precise coordination between vessel arrivals, storage management, and distribution schedules.
Summit Group has developed a specialized workforce to handle these operations, recruiting primarily from Bangladesh’s maritime sector.
“We have a good pool of people who are ex-mariners and engineers,” Alam explains. “They have been with us for the last seven years and everybody has a very good professional background with 20 to 25 years of experience.”
Training programs send operators to facilities in France, Singapore, and Malaysia to learn from established LNG markets. The company maintains a continuous improvement approach, recognizing that LNG terminal operations require constant adaptation to new technologies and safety protocols. The knowledge transfer extends both ways—while Mitsubishi had extensive energy sector experience, the FSRU business was new territory for the Japanese partner.
Critical Infrastructure for National Energy Security
With domestic gas reserves depleting and demand growing, imported LNG has become essential for maintaining power generation and industrial production in Bangladesh. The two FSRUs currently operating in Bangladeshi waters together supply approximately 1,100 million standard cubic feet per day, with Summit’s facility contributing roughly half this volume.
According to Alam, as of August 2025, Bangladesh’s power generation consists of 44% from gas, 20.58% from heavy fuel oil, 26.19% from coal, 4.23% imported, and 3.78% from renewable energy. The fertilizer sector, critical for the country’s agricultural self-sufficiency, depends heavily on consistent gas supply. Disruption to FSRU operations could cascade through the economy, affecting everything from irrigation pumps to manufacturing facilities.
Despite these challenges, Summit Group has maintained consistent operations since the terminal’s commissioning. The Bay of Bengal’s harsh conditions have become a proving ground for offshore LNG infrastructure in tropical cyclone zones.
Summit Group’s handling of these operations demonstrates how technical expertise, international partnerships, and adapted local knowledge combine to maintain critical infrastructure in one of the world’s most challenging maritime environments.