It was always going to unravel. The moment the war disrupted LNG flows and Qatar invoked force majeure, Pakistan’s fragile power equilibrium snapped back to a familiar, uncomfortable default: load shedding, and plenty of it.
For a brief moment, there was misplaced optimism. No LNG? No problem. Just fall back on domestic gas, crank up the system, and keep the lights on. A neat theory. Reality, as usual, had other plans.
Yes, there is some marginal relief on the external account. LNG imports had been clocking in at roughly $300 million a month. That pressure has eased. But that is where the upside ends, rather abruptly.
Domestic gas fields have indeed pushed harder, reversing earlier curtailments made to accommodate LNG inflows. On top of that, unprecedented curbs on household gas consumption are in place. The system is squeezing every molecule it can find.
And yet, the outages persist.
The reason is structural, not incidental. Pakistan’s power system is no longer designed to run on domestic gas alone. The heavy lifting in recent years has come from LNG-based plants, strategically located near load centres. Today, those same plants are running well below capacity, some barely running at all. You can ramp up indigenous gas-based generation, but it simply does not scale. Not to this gap.
Worse, this is just the beginning of the demand curve. Peak summer has not even arrived. Air conditioners are not yet in full swing. And this year carries an added twist: industrial demand is rebounding onto the grid, reversing years of self-generation and captive use. When that demand fully materializes, the system will be tested in ways it has not been in recent memory. In March 2026, actual generation on RLNG was down to just 0.5 billion units versus the referenced 1.9 billion units.
There are, of course, fallback options. Furnace oil-based generation can be ramped up, particularly if the government chooses to ease or remove the levy. But that is no free lunch. It comes with a steep price in the form of sharply higher fuel cost adjustments, feeding directly into already strained consumer bills.
And then there is the timeline problem. LNG shortages are unlikely to resolve neatly with any ceasefire, if and when one materializes. Supply chains do not reset overnight. Contracts, cargoes, and confidence take time to rebuild.
Which leaves Pakistan staring at a long, hot summer where load shedding is not an exception. It is the baseline.
The system is not just short on fuel. It is short on flexibility. And that, more than anything else, is what is now being laid bare.