Produced Water (PW), a key by-product of oil and gas production, poses a significant challenge in Bangladesh, a country with a high population density and a resource-strained natural gas supply. The study synthesized local statistics on PW found in the 2023-24 Annual Report of Bangladesh Oil, Gas and Mineral Corporation (Petrobangla), along with information from the Web of Science, Scopus, and Google Scholar databases. The results reveal three main issues: environmental sensitivity, inadequate data collection, and very high salinity and high levels of TDS (up to 300000 mg/L). Despite the Sylhet gas fields covering an estimated 500–1000 m³/day of PW, water scarcity is further compounded by evidence from national oil companies indicating an inadequate supply of freshwater resources. The existing solutions, such as Metal Organic Frameworks (MOFs), Forward Osmosis (FO), and Reverse Osmosis (RO), offer a viable solution but are limited by exorbitant costs and regulatory mismatches. There is still a lack of comprehensive local data, meaning that the possibilities of PW reuse in industry and agriculture, as well as resource-recovery efforts such as lithium extraction, remain unexamined. The output of the study suggests an early characterization of PW, low-cost pilot projects to test low-cost technologies, as well as a thorough policy change to create sustainable PW management within the realities of the Bangladesh environment.
Sayem et al. (Mon,) studied this question.