Pakistan load-shedding to continue until LNG supplies recover

Pakistan’s electricity shortfall is set to persist for now after Power Minister Sardar Awais Ahmad Khan Leghari said in Islamabad on Thursday that load-shedding during peak hours will continue until liquefied natural gas supplies are restored. The government linked the latest disruption to a force majeure declared by Qatar, reduced hydropower output and a sharp jump in demand, leaving households and businesses across large parts of the country under renewed pressure as temperatures climb.

The minister said the shortage has become most visible in the northern parts of the grid, where supply constraints are harder to manage despite generation availability in the south. He explained that the problem is not simply a lack of installed power capacity, but the inability to move enough electricity across the system when base load remains below the operational threshold needed for stable transmission. That is why K-Electric and the Hyderabad Electric Supply Company were described as exceptions, with authorities saying those areas are not facing the same form of peak-hour rationing.

According to the government’s account, the suspension of LNG availability has removed more than 3,200 megawatts from the system, while lower water releases and reduced hydropower generation have added roughly another 1,600 megawatts of pressure. Officials said demand in April has swung dramatically, ranging from around 9,000 megawatts on cooler days to nearly 20,000 megawatts at its peak. Once consumption moves well above 16,500 megawatts, the minister said, outages become difficult to avoid under current fuel conditions.

Leghari publicly apologised for the prolonged outages and said the government was trying to soften the blow without passing an even larger cost burden to consumers. He told reporters that Pakistan is already producing about 1,400 megawatts through furnace oil to narrow the gap, even though that option is expensive and undesirable for a system already strained by high energy costs. He also said the authorities remain in contact with Qatar, while warning that spot LNG cargoes priced in the range of 18 to 22 dollars per MMBtu are too expensive to be treated as an easy solution.

The minister also outlined a series of emergency measures that show how tightly stretched the power system has become. Maintenance schedules for nuclear plants have been pushed back by a few weeks, and administrative steps such as earlier market closures are being used to shave demand by roughly 1,200 megawatts. He argued that removing economic load management altogether would add around Rs400 billion to circular debt, while heavier reliance on furnace oil could lift the fuel price adjustment by as much as Rs1.30 per unit.

Behind the immediate crisis is a structural problem that Pakistan has wrestled with for years: the country may have generation assets on paper, but dependable supply still depends on fuel imports, hydrology, transmission stability and the state’s weak financial position. When imported gas becomes uncertain, hydropower dips and demand rises at the same time, the system has little room to absorb the shock. The present episode has again exposed how vulnerable the sector remains to regional conflict, shipping disruptions and costly substitute fuels.

The wider consequences are likely to be felt beyond evening inconvenience at home. Longer outages during summer months can hit small businesses, workshops and retailers first, because they have limited backup options and little ability to absorb higher generator or fuel costs. Industrial activity is also affected when supply becomes less predictable, especially in areas already dealing with compressed margins, costly financing and volatile import prices. In that sense, the power crunch is not just a utility issue but a direct economic risk that can feed into slower production, higher costs and public frustration.

For the government, the near-term strategy now rests on two hopes: that LNG availability improves and that hydropower output rises as water conditions stabilise. Leghari said spot cargoes are expected in May and argued that global conditions are gradually becoming more manageable. Until then, the official message is that load management will remain a temporary but unavoidable tool. Whether that reassurance holds will depend on how quickly fuel supplies normalize and whether the grid can withstand the next rise in demand without pushing consumers into even longer outages.