Pakistan Is Juggling Blackouts and Iran Diplomacy

This isn’t the first time that Pakistanis are unsure whether they should celebrate their government’s achievements or berate it for its failures. The country seems to be at the center of attempts to bring peace to West Asia, and is likely to host another round of talks between the US and Iran this week. But it’s also sweltering under hours of power cuts — driven in large part by a shortage of liquefied natural gas from the Gulf, but also because of poor decision-making by officials.

The government has promised that power cuts wouldn’t last longer than two or three hours a day; but last week, at least, they seemed to have crossed that, with the country as a whole reporting a shortfall of 4,500 megawatts of electricity during peak hours. Officials said that they needed at least four tankers of liquid natural gas to arrive from the Gulf in order to fill tanks at Pakistan’s five gas-fired power plants.