The notification from QatarEnergy arrived with the language of legal necessity. Long-term LNG supply to Bangladesh was suspended under force majeure. For Muhammed Aziz Khan, chairman of Summit Group, the development concentrated a thesis he had been building publicly for some time: that for an energy-importing nation like Bangladesh, the ability to pay for LNG is a separate problem from the ability to receive it.
“Physical availability matters as much as price,” Khan said in an April 2026 interview with S&P Global Energy Platts, “because when shipping routes are threatened, even a buyer willing to pay more may not get the molecules on time.”
Qatar had been supplying Bangladesh on long-term contracts, the kind of arrangement that insulates importers from the most extreme spot price swings. With those contracts suspended, Bangladesh was buying everything on the open market. Spot prices for Asian LNG had already exceeded $20/MMBtu following the Strait of Hormuz escalation. Bangladesh had previously paid as much as $23/MMBtu during earlier price spikes. Khan’s calculation was direct: Bangladesh spent $3.88 billion importing 109 LNG cargoes in 2025. “That $3.88 billion can easily become $7 billion plus, which the country can ill afford.”
The Numbers Behind Summit Group’s Role in Bangladesh’s Gas Supply
Bangladesh relies on imports for roughly 95% of its energy needs. The country’s domestic gas production has been falling at approximately 5% per year since 2018, according to S&P Global CERA analysts, as reported by The Business Standard, a gap that imported LNG fills by necessity rather than choice. Bangladesh’s gas supply shortfall exceeds 1,300 million cubic feet per day, against total demand of roughly 4,000 mmcfd.
Summit Group’s FSRU, commissioned at Moheshkhali in April 2019, has processed approximately 35 million cubic meters of LNG and supplied roughly 785,549,295 MMBtu to the national grid since it began operations. In FY2024-2025, the terminal covered about 13% of Bangladesh’s total gas demand. The Strait of Hormuz closure removed an estimated 1.5 million tonnes per week from global LNG supply, or about 19% of global exports, according to Wood Mackenzie, hitting Bangladesh at a moment when its two FSRUs at Moheshkhali were already running at roughly 96% of combined capacity.
Summit completed its 250th ship-to-ship transfer in 2025. Bangladesh barely had LNG infrastructure before 2019, and Summit’s operation has absorbed the country’s entire transition from marginal LNG buyer to major importer, as LNG Prime reported.
Summit Group’s Canceled Contracts and the Infrastructure Gap They Left
Bangladesh awarded Summit a contract to build a third FSRU, which would have been the company’s second. The government canceled it in 2024. Summit is contesting the cancellation; the matter is in judicial review. A separate onshore LNG terminal at Matarbari Island, planned on a build-own-operate-transfer basis and intended to be Bangladesh’s first onshore facility, was derailed when the government repealed the Quick Enhancement of Electricity and Energy Supply (Special Provisions) Act.
The Matarbari terminal’s future now rests on whether the government issues an international tender, in which case Khan says Summit will bid, or negotiates a government-to-government deal, which would limit Summit to buying capacity from a state-owned terminal. The Business Standard has reported that the bilateral route is under active consideration.
The capacity math is not forgiving. Bangladesh’s LNG imports are projected to reach 7.2 million mt/year in 2026, up from 6.8 million in 2025. Khan puts the long-term ceiling at 15 million mt/year. The country’s current FSRUs run at 7.5 million mt/year of combined capacity, already near saturation. Without additional regasification infrastructure, import volume growth hits a physical wall regardless of what supply contracts say.
Aziz Khan’s Prescription: Rationing, Stockpiling, and Privatization
Khan’s near-term recommendations are specific and sequenced. Prioritize energy allocation for power generation, essential industry, and agriculture. Implement rationing where supply falls short. Temporarily suspend taxes on imported LNG, coal, diesel, and fuel oil to reduce procurement costs. Direct state agencies including Bangladesh Power Development Board and Bangladesh Petroleum Corporation to rent under-utilized private storage terminals and build fuel reserves while current market access allows.
On structural reform, Khan’s central argument is privatization: opening LNG import and energy distribution infrastructure to private and foreign investment. “Privatization is key to securing foreign direct investment,” he said. An IEEFA analysis has separately identified Bangladesh’s LNG dependence as a systemic resilience risk, citing both fiscal exposure and supply concentration risk, the precise vulnerabilities Khan is describing from the inside.
Why Aziz Khan Is Betting Summit Group on Bangladesh’s Data Center Market
The same excess electricity capacity that creates fiscal drag for Summit is also the foundation of a different calculation. Summit’s power plants carry approximately 350 megawatts available for reallocation to data centers. Bangladesh’s recently enacted Personal Data Protection Ordinance, 2025, gazetted in November, restricts the transfer of sensitive personal data outside the country without regulatory approval, according to The Daily Star. That compliance pressure creates baseline domestic demand that makes large-scale data center investment worth pursuing.
Summit Technopolis Hi Tech Park, or land adjacent to its power plants, would host the first facility in Dhaka. Khan estimates an 18-month build from the point regulatory permissions are granted. The company is also laying optical fiber from Bangladesh to Singapore, with some regulatory delays in Bangladesh, which would provide the low-latency international bandwidth a commercially competitive data center requires.
Khan describes Summit’s position as neutral between South Asia and Southeast Asia, with cost structures meaningfully below Singapore or Mumbai, and energy inputs under the company’s direct control. At 350 megawatts of dedicated capacity, Summit would reach the hyperscaler threshold. Data Center Dynamics has reported on the company’s entry plans, noting that electricity, land, and fiber ownership are the competitive advantages Khan is building on.
Summit is seeking outside partners with marketing expertise, acknowledging that filling hyperscale capacity requires customer relationships and a commercial sales capability the company does not currently have. It is also exploring importing green electricity from Indonesia and Malaysia, anticipating that large cloud providers will specify renewable sourcing as a procurement requirement.
The data center bet and the LNG business face the same underlying variable: Bangladesh’s institutional reliability. Aziz Khan has been direct about what he expects from the post-election government: “The rule of law will prevail, reposing trust in investments and in Bangladesh’s institutions.” That confidence underpins both Summit’s willingness to contest a canceled contract in court and its willingness to commit capital to a data center market that does not yet exist at scale.