This newspaper has tracked the Iran war day after day, and the bleakest lesson for Pakistan lies far from the battlefield. A state of more than 240 million people has had to ask Qatar for at least four LNG cargoes because an energy system built around imported fuel was suddenly hostage to the Strait of Hormuz.
Even the ceasefire did not restore normality as transit through Hormuz remains restricted. Meanwhile, officials have told Nepra that LNG under force majeure was not available for power generation. Pakistan’s LNG plants have more than 4,500MW of generation capacity, and key Punjab plants together matter even more for grid stability when summer demand rises.
The official line does offer some reassurance: inflation averaged 5.7 per cent in the first nine months of the fiscal year, and the State Bank says reserves reached $16.4 billion, leaving Pakistan better placed than in past crises. Fine. Yet macroeconomic composure is not the same thing as operational resilience. The finance minister has already spoken of the need for a strategic petroleum reserve, and Islamabad has been weighing fresh financing options partly because regional conflict has sharpened the danger to imports and external buffers.
There is progress worth defending. According to media sources, more than 70 per cent of Pakistan’s electricity comes from domestic sources, with rooftop solar expanding fast enough to cut daytime grid demand and reduce exposure to LNG shocks.
Yet the same reports have noted that outages persist because theft and infrastructure failures still break the chain between generation and delivery. That is the real scandal. Pakistan has spent years adding capacity, paying capacity charges and rearranging debt, while citizens are told to clap for stability in a system that still cannot move affordable power cleanly to the people who need it.
Pakistan has seen where this road leads. The 2015 Karachi heatwave saw more than 1,100 deaths linked to extreme temperatures worsened by power and water cuts. Two years later, protests had erupted across the length and breadth of the country after electricity failed during sehri in Ramazan. We cannot afford to see those dark, dreadful nights again. *