Title: europes-energy-crisis-leaves-almost-all-of-pakista
1Europes Energy Crisis Leaves Almost All Of
Pakistan Without Power
Pakistan faced an almost nationwide power outage
on Monday. A significant energy shortage is one
of the main drivers of the nations current
economic crisis..The long-awaited winter
energy crisis has finally hitbut it wasnt in
Europe after all. On Monday, almost the entirety
of Pakistan was left without power when a
misguided energy saving strategy by the
government backfired. Runaway inflation, a
severely weakened currency, and rapidly emptying
foreign exchange reserves have left Pakistan on
the brink of economic collapse. The country of
230 million people is plagued by overdue energy
payments, and was seeking to cut costs by
lowering energy use when the plan went off the
rails, leaving people across the country without
power or water for more than 12 hours. Pakistani
officials had planned to save on energy costs by
turning off electricity across the country
overnight. Nighttime has the lowest usage hours
for energy in Pakistan, where winters are
relatively mild. The problem came when
technicians tried to reboot the electric system
in the morning, and found out that the
infrastructure wasnt capable of booting up the
entire nations energy grid all at once. Major
cities, including the capital city of Islamabad,
as well as smaller cities and towns across the
country were left in the dark for 15 hours on
Monday, lasting into the night. As an economic
measure, we temporarily shut down our power
generation systems Sunday night, Energy
Minister Khurram Dastgir told local media. He
went on to explain that when engineers tried to
turn the systems back on, a fluctuation in
voltage occurred, which forced engineers to
shut down the power grid stations
altogether.Oil Price