ISLAMABAD:
Federal Minister for Power Awais Ahmed Khan Leghari on Friday announced the end of electricity load shedding across the country, attributing the improvement to the arrival of liquefied natural gas (LNG) supplies and increased hydropower generation.
Talking about power shortage, the minister said that Pakistan had received LNG shipments a day earlier and “with the arrival of gas, load management has now been completed”. He recalled that just two weeks ago the country had faced significant load shedding with outages lasting up to five hours on 13 and 14 April.
Giving a timeline of the situation, Leghari said no load shedding 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 Power Division had earlier clarified in a press conference about 15 days ago that the outages were not due to any system failure or lack of generation capacity.
He said that load shedding had earlier 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 latest shortage was caused by a disruption in gas supplies related to the Iran-US conflict, which had prevented LNG shipments from arriving on time.
Leghari explained that generating electricity through diesel or furnace oil to completely eliminate load shedding would have increased the cost significantly, placing an additional burden on consumers.
“If we had relied solely 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 generation had now improved significantly.
“Hydel generation has reached about 6,000 megawatts, while earlier it had fallen to as low as 1,000 megawatts,” he said.
The minister expressed hope that transmission lines would remain free from faults and disruptions, stressing that stability in the system was essential to maintain uninterrupted supply.
He acknowledged that the government had to source expensive LNG from the open market due to 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 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 furnace oil and other fuel-based plants had also been operated to stabilize supply.
He said the government will continue efforts to protect consumers from high electricity costs.
