DHAKA - Energy-starved Bangladesh's fuel import bill surged over 101 percent year on year to $1.195 billion in the first quarter of the current 2011-12 fiscal year (July 2011-June 2012), as the country becomes more reliant on the natural resources in the wake of insufficient and unreliable electricity, officials said Sunday.

According to statistics of the Bangladesh Bank (BB), the settlement of letters of credit (LCs) , generally known as actual petroleum imports, for both refined and crude oil stood at $1,195.52 million in July-September compared to $592.08 million in the same period a year earlier.

In July-September, the BB data showed, the country's overall fuel import orders, however, increased by around 107.29 percent year on year.

The overall import orders, officially known as fresh opening of import letters of credit, increased to $1,173.65 million in July-September against $566.19 million in the same period of the last fiscal year, it showed.

An official of the State-run Bangladesh Petroleum Corporation (BPC) told Xinhua on condition of anonymity that the country's annual demand of fuel oil marked a rise sharply due mainly to installation of about a dozen oil-fired power plants in recent years.

Apart from this, he said, "We had to buy more oil as farm equipments were also dependent more on diesel generators for energy requirements in the wake of insufficient and unreliable electricity."

The official of the BPC, the country's only fuel importer and distributor, said fuel import costs will be a record over $5 billion in the current fiscal year compared with $4 billion in the last 2010-2011 fiscal year.

Energy-starved Bangladesh's all power plants are currently generating around 4,500 MW power per day against a peak demand of about 5,600 MW, a Bangladesh's Power Development Board official said, adding that some power plants are generating far less than their capacity due to inadequate gas supply.

Bangladesh currently faces acute gas shortages, with production at around 2,000 million cubic feet (mmcft) from 23 gas fields per day against a demand of more than 2,500 mmcft a day.

Against this backdrop, the Bangladeshi government has worked out a plan to produce an additional 7,800 megawatts electricity by 2013 to improve the country's power situation, the South Asian nation's Finance Minister AMA Muhith said in his budget speech.

Considering the crisis of natural gas, Muhith said, "We have taken steps to build coal, diesel and furnace oil, dual fuel and renewable energy-based power plants to reduce the power deficit in addition to installing gas-fired power plants."

But the Washington-based World Bank has criticized the Bangladeshi government's more reliance on diesel and furnace oil power plants, saying it would cost the country in the long run.

Bangladesh in September for the second time this year raised prices of all petroleum products. A press release issued by the Energy Ministry then said the price increase was imperative to adjust with the international market price and reduce the subsidies given by the government in petroleum products which (subsidies), according to the BPC official, stand at about 16 billion taka (about $213 million) a month.