Pakistan gas crisis: Women wake at 6 a.m. to cook amid shortages

Karachi, Pakistan – Farhat Qureshi, 60, once could cook whenever she pleased without glancing at the clock. Now her mornings begin with a single question: how much can she finish before the kitchen gas vanishes again?

At her home in Karachi, gas for cooking comes only in short windows: morning, midday and evening. Miss one slot, and cooking is delayed, food must be reheated, all plans shift, and the kitchen waits.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen this happen in my entire life,” Qureshi told Al Jazeera. “My whole morning revolves around gas.”

Pakistan's energy crisis worsened after the United States and Israel struck Iran on February 28, turning a recent LNG surplus into alarming scarcity. Pakistan's LNG imports fell from 8.2 million tonnes in 2021 to 6.1 million tonnes by the end of 2025.

The US-Israel war with Iran added pressure to a system already strained by years of declining domestic gas output. Pakistan meets most of its daily gas demand from domestic fields that have been slowly depleting for years. Imported LNG, mostly under long-term contracts, filled part of the gap when shipments flowed normally. Nearly all of Pakistan's LNG comes from Qatar and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and imported LNG supplies about a quarter of the country's electricity.

Since the war began, LNG shipments have plunged. Monthly data from Pakistan's Oil and Gas Regulatory Authority (OGRA) shows the country received between 8 and 12 LNG cargoes each month in 2025 and early 2026. In March, only two shipments arrived. However, over the past weekend, a Qatari LNG tanker crossed the Strait of Hormuz bound for Pakistan – the first such shipment since the war started.

Pakistani households experience the energy crisis in their own way: through the unpaid labor of women who wake earlier, cook faster, rearrange meals, postpone rest and plan entire days around whether there is gas to light the stove.

The gas schedule has changed how Qureshi runs her home – and her life. She cooks for four people, including her husband and two children, without help, making the gas timetable the central factor in her daily planning.

For her, cooking is now a chore split into mandatory shifts. In most Karachi households, gas is available first from about 6 a.m. to 9:30 a.m., for about two hours around noon, and again from 6 p.m. to about 9:30 p.m. Although it may seem a manageable schedule, gas supply is erratic, with low pressure making cooking take longer.

“It’s frustrating when the time comes and there’s no gas. Living like this is exhausting,” Qureshi said.

“In the evening, I want to spend time with my family and do housework, or I have many other things to do,” Qureshi said. “But gas only arrives at 6 p.m. So I have to do everything very quickly.”

According to a 2024 policy report by the Pakistan Institute of Development Economics and the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA), unpaid care work in the country is done mainly by women, with daily tasks such as cooking and cleaning often considered non-economic work. The report says women spend about three hours a day on unpaid, non-market work, with the longest time spent in the kitchen.

Laiba Zahid, 24, a teacher, said her day is now divided into breakfast, lunch and dinner slots determined by gas supply.

“Our dinner time is fixed. We have to eat early,” she said. “Because after 9 p.m., gas flow becomes very slow... By 8:30 p.m., I know we must have the food ready.”

When Zahid returns from work around 2 p.m., she has little time before gas cuts off. She must reheat lunch immediately.

“If not, the gas goes off. And then I would have to use the microwave to heat food. But that makes the food very dry,” she said. “So, I feel like I don’t get a proper meal.”

Even tea, a small daily pleasure, depends on the gas schedule. Zahid usually drinks tea in the evening. “Now tea is missing from my life,” she said.

The biggest compromise, she said, is “sleep and proper rest.”

“Definitely, my routine is controlled by the gas window,” Zahid said; it “determines what time I eat breakfast, lunch and dinner.”

It also determines when she goes out, meets friends or runs errands. “We can eat out,” she said, “but with a family of five, we can’t do that every week.”

The World Bank's latest Pakistan Energy Survey found that in 2024, less than half of households had access to clean cooking fuels, although electricity access was much higher. Nationally, 44.3% of households used clean, low-emission fuel stoves as their primary cooking fuel, 38.6% used piped natural gas (PNG) and 5.7% used liquefied petroleum gas (LPG). PNG is the most used cooking fuel in urban areas, with LPG used as a backup due to its higher cost.

The energy crisis has also changed the lunch business of chef Fatima Hafeez, who runs a home-based eatery. When PNG is unavailable, she uses LPG cylinders.

“Sometimes I have to cancel orders because cooking with LPG cylinders turns out to be very expensive,” she said. “Power cuts and gas shortages have troubled me a lot.”

Hafeez said she starts work very early because of the gas window. Sometimes, the problem is worsened by power outages.

“If there is no electricity and no gas, we can’t even use the generator because it runs on gas,” she said. “We installed a UPS, but it needs to be charged first. So we need electricity for it to work.”

Cancelling orders is also risky, Hafeez said. “If you’ve taken an order from someone, they shouldn’t be angry with you,” she said. “It’s not good if we don’t deliver on time.”

For Shabana Hassan, 47, a mother of three who runs a small beauty salon from home, the struggle is not just about gas but also electricity.

“Power cuts have become a big problem,” she said. “When there’s no electricity, I prefer to style clients’ hair without using electrical tools.”

But that hurts her business. Despite having solar power, it does not fully solve the problem. “We cannot run electrical machines on the solar system, like hair straighteners or curlers,” Hassan said.

Simalah Zafar Baqai, a student at the University of Karachi, said the crisis for her is measured in the hours she can study or sleep.

“My entire routine is arranged around two things: gas and power cuts,” the 22-year-old psychology major said.

“All day, I ask my family, my parents, my siblings: ‘Is there gas? When will it come? When will it go?’,” she said. “We can’t think about anything else.”

Qureshi remembers when gas supply was uninterrupted and cooking did not require all-day planning. She could cook for the whole day early in the afternoon. Now, she said, “a continuous job has been broken into pieces.”

“Our daily life is being affected. Our personal life is being affected,” she said. “And obviously, the hard work has increased.”