ISLAMABAD:
Federal Minister for Energy Awais Ahmed Khan Leghari on Friday announced the end of power load management across the country, attributing the improvement to the arrival of liquefied natural gas (LNG) and increased hydropower generation.
Speaking about power shortages, the minister said Pakistan had received LNG shipments the day before and “with the arrival of gas, load management has now ended”. He recalled that just two weeks ago, the country faced significant load shedding, with outages lasting up to five hours on April 13 and 14.
Giving a timeline of the situation, Leghari said no load management was carried out on April 17, 18 and 19, while from April 19 to 29, load shedding had already been reduced to between two and two and a half hours.
He noted that the Energy Division had clarified in a press conference about 15 days ago that the outages were not due to a system failure or lack of generating capacity.
He said load shedding had already been eliminated during the tenure of former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, but the country was forced to face blackouts again after six years.
According to the minister, the recent shortages were caused by an interruption in gas supplies linked to the Iran-US conflict, which prevented LNG shipments from arriving on time.
Leghari explained that generating electricity using diesel or oil to completely eliminate load shedding would have significantly increased costs, placing an additional burden on consumers.
“If we had relied entirely on expensive fuel-based generation, electricity would have become unaffordable,” he said.
He added that water releases from dams are determined by the Indus River System Authority (IRSA) based on provincial requirements, but noted that hydropower production has now improved significantly.
“Hydel’s production has reached around 6,000 megawatts, whereas previously it had fallen to 1,000 megawatts,” he said.
The minister expressed hope that transmission lines would remain free of outages and disruptions, stressing that system stability was essential to maintaining uninterrupted supply.
He admitted that the government had to procure expensive LNG from the open market due to the non-availability of Qatari gas during the crisis.
Leghari clarified that the country’s actual power generation capacity was around 32,000 megawatts, not 46,000 megawatts as is commonly believed.
He added that production capacity fluctuates at different times of the year depending on several factors.
“By the grace of Allah, we have managed to eliminate load shedding,” he said, adding that fuel oil plants and other fuel-using facilities had also been tapped to stabilize the supply.
He said the government would continue its efforts to protect consumers from high electricity costs.
