Pakistan cuts power to households on fuel shortage

Bloomberg

Pakistan is cutting electricity to households and industry as the cash-strapped country can no longer afford to buy coal or natural gas from overseas to fuel its power plants.
The South Asian nation is struggling to procure fuel from the spot market after prices of liquefied natural gas and coal surged to records last month as the war in Ukraine exacerbated supply shortfalls. Pakistan’s energy costs more than doubled to $15 billion in nine months ended February from a year earlier, and it isn’t able to spend more on additional shipments.
About 3,500 megawatts worth of power capacity had been shut due to the fuel shortages, according to a Twitter post by Miftah Ismail, who has been selected as finance minister by new Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif. A similar amount is offline due to technical faults, he said.
The more than 7,000 megawatts represents almost a fifth of total generation capacity, according to Tahir Abbas, the head of research at Arif Habib Ltd in Karachi.
The electricity crunch is complicating the already tough economic challenge for Sharif — who has yet to appoint an energy minister — after former leader Imran Khan was ousted last week following a period of political turmoil.
A relatively poor nation that’s highly dependent on energy imports, Pakistan has been hit especially hard by rising fuel costs.