ISLAMABAD:
Federal Minister for Power Awais Ahmed Khan Leghari on Friday announced the end of electricity load management across the country, attributing the improvement to the arrival of liquefied natural gas (LNG) supplies and increased hydropower generation.
Speaking about power shortages, the minister said that Pakistan had received LNG shipments a day earlier, and “with the arrival of gas, load management has now been brought to an end”. He recalled that just two weeks ago, the country had faced significant load shedding, with outages lasting up to five hours on April 13 and 14.
Providing a timeline of the situation, Leghari said that 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 Power Division had earlier clarified in a press conference, around 15 days ago, that the outages were not due to any system failure or lack of generation capacity.
He said that load shedding had previously been eliminated during the tenure of former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, but the country was forced to face outages again after six years.
According to the minister, the recent shortages were caused by a disruption in gas supplies linked 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 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 generation had now improved substantially.
“Hydel generation has reached around 6,000 megawatts, whereas earlier it had dropped 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 critical to sustaining uninterrupted supply.
He acknowledged 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 stood at around 32,000 megawatts, not 46,000 megawatts as widely perceived.
He added that generation capacity fluctuates at different times of the year depending on multiple factors.
“By the grace of Allah, we have succeeded in eliminating load shedding,” he said, adding that furnace oil and other fuel-based plants had also been operated to stabilise supply.
He said that the government would continue efforts to shield consumers from high electricity costs.
