ISLAMABAD (The Thursday Times) — Pakistan’s power shortages eased sharply on Friday after a rebound in hydropower output cut daily outages in some areas from roughly six hours to less than three, offering temporary relief after a week of worsening supply disruptions that had exposed the fragility of the country’s electricity system.
The improvement followed a significant increase in water releases from dams, which pushed hydropower generation to around 4,100 megawatts late on Thursday, up from 1,800 megawatts before the releases, according to officials cited by Reuters. The stronger hydropower flow also reduced pressure on the grid and enabled an additional 400 megawatts of electricity to be transmitted from southern Pakistan.
For a country long accustomed to energy crises arriving in waves, the sudden recovery underscored how heavily the power system still depends on variables beyond immediate state control. Within days, Pakistan had swung from intensified shortages and prolonged outages to a measurable, if still partial, stabilisation brought about by greater water availability and improved transmission conditions.
Earlier this week, the electricity shortfall had doubled to 3,400 megawatts, or about one-sixth of national demand, according to Reuters. In parts of northern Pakistan, that deficit translated into six to seven hours of daily outages, disrupting households, businesses and even telecommunications networks.
Officials said the earlier deterioration was driven largely by a steep fall in hydropower generation. Power Minister Awais Leghari told Reuters that output had declined 48 per cent from a year earlier because provinces had not been requesting water releases from dams, with recent heavy rainfall reducing the immediate need for irrigation. That unusual convergence of weather patterns and administrative demand left the grid more exposed just as supply pressures intensified.
What changed to trigger the higher water releases was not immediately clear. But the turnaround highlighted the central role of hydropower in Pakistan’s energy balance and the extent to which irrigation decisions can carry consequences far beyond agriculture. In Pakistan, water and power are not separate policy arenas so much as two sides of the same national vulnerability.
There is now cautious expectation that hydropower generation may remain elevated in the coming days as the monsoon crop season begins, assuming rainfall does not once again reduce irrigation demand. That could help sustain the present easing in shortages, though officials have stopped short of suggesting that the underlying risks have disappeared.
The government, meanwhile, is trying to avoid a more expensive response in international fuel markets. Pakistan has no immediate plans to buy liquefied natural gas on the spot market, Mr Leghari told Reuters, and will instead rely on a combination of fuel oil generation and stronger hydropower output to contain outages.
That decision reflects both financial pressure and political caution. Spot LNG has become a costly proposition, particularly after the suspension of Qatari supplies forced Pakistan to consider alternatives under more difficult market conditions. According to Mr Leghari, once terminal and related costs are included, spot cargoes can add another four to five dollars to the effective price, making furnace oil comparatively cheaper in the current moment.
Pakistan has already used that fallback. After Qatar suspended LNG supplies, the country partly offset power shortfalls of up to 2,500 megawatts by running furnace oil plants at full capacity, a move that helped cushion the blow but offered no long-term solution to the broader strain on the system.
The government’s position appears to be that absorbing discomfort is preferable to importing inflation. Mr Leghari told Reuters that Pakistan had effectively disciplined itself to bear the hardship rather than allow higher energy costs to feed through more sharply into consumer prices. It was a stark formulation, but one that captures the trade-offs facing a government attempting to preserve economic stability while operating with limited room for manoeuvre.
The latest easing in outages also comes at a moment of wider regional uncertainty. Pakistan, which Reuters said is trying to mediate an end to the Iran war, had earlier expected only limited domestic disruption from the halt in LNG imports linked to the conflict, especially when compared with the widespread outages that followed Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022. But that assessment did not anticipate the simultaneous drop in hydropower, which compounded the country’s vulnerability.
That combination of external fuel risk and internal hydro weakness has laid bare a deeper problem. Pakistan’s energy insecurity is not merely the result of one missing shipment or one seasonal fluctuation. It is structural, shaped by dependence on imported fuels, transmission constraints, climate-linked variability and a system in which one disrupted input can quickly cascade across the whole network.
For now, the improvement in hydropower has bought Pakistan some breathing room. But the speed with which the crisis worsened, and then partially eased, is also a reminder that relief remains contingent rather than secure. The lights may be staying on for longer today. Whether that stability lasts is another question entirely.
