Pakistan Govt Acknowledges Seven Hours Of Power Outages Amid Middle East Crisis

Last Updated:April 17, 2026, 10:22 IST

The Pakistani minister appealed to consumers to conserve power to sail through an international crisis.

Amid the ongoing crisis in the Middle East, Pakistan’s Power Minister Awais Leghari on Thursday acknowledged that the country is facing six to seven hours of load management—nearly triple the government’s earlier commitment.

He attributed the increase to a sharp rise in demand, limited availability of imported gas, and reduced water releases for irrigation.

Speaking at a news conference, the minister stated that the power shortfalls had been caused by disruptions to LNG imports due to the Middle East crisis and by lower provincial irrigation water requirements, both of which he said were beyond the government’s control, Dawn reported.

However, he said that the government was making every possible effort to minimise both outages.

He further informed that the government had even postponed maintenance of nuclear power plants for a few weeks. He added that all available resources had been mobilised, including diplomatic channels, to secure fuel supplies through alternative LNG sourcing and diversion of local gas, while ensuring adequate availability for fertiliser production, according to Dawn.

In addition, the minister said that the unusual fluctuations in demand this month are also due to weather conditions, with the lowest demand of 9,000MW on April 9 and a peak of 20,000MW six days later, on April 15.

On the other side of the equation, hydropower sou­rces provided 3,200MW and 3,000MW from liquefied natural gas imports, leading to minuscule generation from furnace oil because it had a significant fuel-cost impact.

This year, however, all LNG-based plants with a capacity of 6,000MW remain mostly idle due to LNG import disruptions caused by the Middle East war. While LNG-based plants provide no more than 500MW and that too on local gas, hydropower supply also stood at 1,600MW, because of recent rains that replaced water discharges from dams for irrigation.

The minister appealed to consumers to conserve power to sail through an international crisis.

He added that despite the ongoing challenges, Pakistan’s diverse energy sources like coal, solar, wind, nuclear and others are also a strength, which provides resilience in times of crisis.

Leghari said that currently, spot purchases are not possible because of the war’s impact and unaffordable prices.

With these load management efforts, the minister said the positive fuel cost adjustment next month would be around Rs1.3 per unit, compared to Rs1.8 per unit a couple of months ago; otherwise, fuel costs would have risen significantly with full utilisation of furnace oil- and diesel-based plants.

He took responsibility for consumers’ suffering but said the challenges were caused by a war in the neighbourhood and lower water requirements for irrigation.

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