Pakistan Plunges Into Darkness As Attack Leaves 140mn Without Power

Photo: AFP

Over 140 million Pakistanis were left without power after militants attacked the national grid with blasts specifically targeting power pylons. Some are still waiting for power to return.

Up to 80 percent of the population reported losing electricity after attacks on a transmission tower caused nationwide blackouts.

Two nuclear plants were still offline Sunday after the outages and there were some problems reported at the country’s main international airport in Lahore.

Islamabad has been working on restoring the power. Pakistan’s Ministry of Water and Power said via Twitter: “On the Prime Minister’s directive, we are not to sleep until this problem is resolved.”

However, a “backward surge” was making the reparations very difficult, according to a ministry spokesperson Zafaryab Khan. “The blowing up of two power pylons in Naseerabad last night created a backward surge which affected the system. It was an act of sabotage.”

On Sunday, a spokesman for the national power company said that “electricity has been restored in all parts of the country,” AFP reported.

“Some 6,000 megawatts of electricity has been added to the national system and within a couple of hours distribution will be normal,” he said.

Reuters/Zahid Hussein

AFP reports that Pakistan's electricity distribution system is a complex -- and delicate -- web and a major fault at one section often leads to chain reaction and breakdowns of power generation and transmission.

In addition to chronic infrastructure problems, the energy sector is also trapped into a vicious "circular debt" brought on by the dual effect of the government setting low electricity prices and customers failing to pay for it.

State utilities therefore lose money, and cannot pay private power generating companies, which in turn cannot pay the oil and gas suppliers, who cut off the supply.

The fuel crisis began last week when Pakistan State Oil was forced to slash imports because banks refused to extend any more credit to the government-owned company, which supplies 80 percent of the country's oil.

The massive blackout shortly followed Pakistan’s gasoline shortage crisis, with the nation’s Prime Minister, Nawaz Sharif, being forced to cancel his trip to the World Economic Forum in Davos to deal with the problem. Plunging oil prices are leaving national utility companies without the necessary profits to pay for maintenance and upgrades.

Solving Pakistan's energy crisis was a key campaign pledge for Sharif in the run-up to the 2013 general election, and the shortage is heaping fresh pressure on his government.