Ten months ago, Pakistan's problem with liquefied natural gas was that it had too much of it. In December 2025 the Petroleum Division approved an Annual Delivery Plan for 2026 that sent 35 contracted cargoes abroad: 24 from Qatar under the Net Proceeds Differential clause and 11 from Eni under a negotiated settlement with Pakistan LNG Limited. Officials at the time said that even after those diversions the country would be left with 13 surplus cargoes in 2026, because national gas consumption had fallen by more than 400 million cubic feet a day. Locally produced gas had been curtailed for months because the transmission network was too full to take it.
This October the question has reversed. QatarEnergy has extended its force majeure on deliveries to Pakistan until 6 November, Petroleum Minister Ali Pervaiz Malik confirmed at the end of September, citing continued disruption around the Strait of Hormuz. Households in parts of the Sui Northern network are receiving gas in three-hour windows around breakfast, lunch and dinner. Furnace oil is back in the evening merit order. And the officials who spent 2025 negotiating how to send cargoes away are now trying to work out how to bring enough of them in for December and January.
The speed of that turn is the main lesson of the year. A portfolio that looked over-contracted in a calm market looks thin the moment its main supplier cannot ship.
How the supply fell away
The disruption began with the attack on Qatar's Ras Laffan LNG complex on 2 March 2026. QatarEnergy declared force majeure two days later. Under Pakistan's two long-term contracts with Qatar, managed by Pakistan State Oil, the country is meant to receive five cargoes a month priced at 13.37 per cent of Brent and four a month at 10.2 per cent of Brent. PSO reported importing 109 LNG cargoes in the financial year ending June 2025, so a normal month brings around nine Qatari deliveries.
The actual count since March has been a fraction of that. According to figures reported from the Oil and Gas Regulatory Authority's monthly price calculations, Pakistan received 11 cargoes under the Qatar arrangement between March and September 2026, against 64 Qatar-linked cargoes in the same seven months of 2025. It bought another seven cargoes on the spot market over the period. In September only two Qatari cargoes arrived, on 10 and 23 September, and officials have said that diplomatic contact with Iran helped secure their passage. Eight had arrived in September 2025.
The trade data shows the same contraction from the other side. The Pakistan Bureau of Statistics recorded LNG imports of $364.1 million in July and August 2026, down 28.3 per cent from $508 million a year earlier. Lower import value here does not mean lower cost per unit. It means fewer molecules.
What scarcity has cost
The spot cargoes that filled part of the gap were expensive. Power Minister Awais Ahmad Khan Leghari said in September that the disruption had pushed spot prices to between $23 and $25 per million British thermal units. In July, after five spot cargoes made up the month's entire RLNG supply, OGRA raised prices by as much as 34.6 per cent.
September showed what happens when term cargoes return, even briefly. With two Qatari cargoes in the calculation and no spot purchases, OGRA cut RLNG prices by about a fifth month on month. The SNGPL distribution price fell from $19.0276 to $15.196 per mmBtu, and the SSGC price from $18.1345 to $14.223. That relief came with constrained volume: PSO's supply on the SNGPL network fell to 201 million cubic feet a day in September, according to a research note by Arif Habib Limited.
The price swing tells you what the long-term contracts are actually worth. In 2025 the 13.37 per cent slope was the subject of renegotiation because it looked expensive against a soft market. In 2026 the same slope is the cheapest LNG Pakistan can get, when it can get it at all. Contract value is not a fixed property of a slope. It depends on what the alternative costs on the day.
Who gets the gas
When the system runs short, someone is cut. Pakistan produces around 3.2 billion cubic feet a day of domestic gas and has import agreements for about 1 bcfd of RLNG, so the loss of most contracted LNG removes a large share of the marginal supply that the northern network depends on. As of 28 September, according to linepack data cited by officials, about 206 million cubic feet a day of RLNG was going to power plants, 85 to fertiliser plants, and 180 to export and non-export industry.
Each of those allocations has a different cost if it is cut. The power sector is the most flexible in theory, because grid demand falls in winter and some plants can switch fuels. In practice the flexibility is limited. An official at the Independent System and Market Operator said furnace oil capacity is about 1,400 megawatts, with around 800 megawatts being run during peak hours from 5pm to 1am to reduce RLNG imports. The same official said furnace oil cannot fully replace RLNG because large RLNG plants in load centres are needed for system stability. Pakistan has 16 LNG-fired plants with a combined 7,640 megawatts of capacity, according to June data from the Private Power and Infrastructure Board, against six furnace oil plants with 1,116 megawatts. The substitution has its own price. Shankar Talreja of Topline Securities put the cost of generation on furnace oil at over Rs40 per kWh, roughly the same as RLNG over the previous two months. Furnace oil sales reached 93,000 tonnes in September, up from 11,078 tonnes a year earlier, according to Oil Companies Advisory Council data.
Fertiliser is harder. Fatima Fertilizer and Agritech currently receive around 85 million cubic feet a day of RLNG, and officials have said that supply may be curtailed if the shortage deepens in December and January. Gas is a feedstock for urea, not only a fuel, so a cut there shows up later as lower domestic urea output and possibly a larger import bill during the sowing season.
Households are being protected in principle, and officials have indicated that domestic consumers would receive priority in a severe shortage. But the timed supply already in place shows that priority does not mean full supply. When pipeline gas is unreliable, households turn to LPG cylinders, which raises the price of a fuel that poorer families depend on.
The winter arithmetic
The numbers officials have given for the coming months are sobering. One senior official involved in procurement estimated that Pakistan will need three or four cargoes in November, seven or eight in December and ten or eleven in January. Another estimate, reported in late September, put the requirement at around nine cargoes each in December 2026 and January 2027. Against that, the government was hoping for two Qatari cargoes in October without any firm assurance, and a Qatari delegation was scheduled to visit Islamabad between 30 September and 15 October to settle the 2026-27 delivery plan.
Two things are worth noting about the timing. First, the force majeure has been extended in steps rather than lifted, which makes it hard to plan beyond a few weeks. Second, some of the 2026 Qatari volume had already been released before the crisis began. Officials have said around 24 cargoes would not reach Pakistan in 2026 because of the NPD diversions agreed in late 2025. Those cargoes cannot now be recalled. The Eni arrangement is in a similar position: after the cancellations, Eni is due to deliver one cargo each in January 2027 and December 2027.
The diversions were a sensible response to the surplus. They were also a reminder that NPD is a one-way valve. It lets Pakistan send volume out in a soft market, with Pakistan bearing the loss if a cargo sells below the term price. It does not give Pakistan any priority to bring that volume back when the market turns.
What the portfolio needs
Transition Economics Institute's view this October is that Pakistan should not draw the wrong conclusion from either half of the year. The surplus of 2025 did not prove that long-term LNG was unnecessary, and the scarcity of 2026 does not prove that every diverted cargo was a mistake. Both prove that the portfolio was built around a single supply route and a single main supplier, with flexibility that only works in one direction.
Three changes would make the next crisis less severe.
The first is two-way flexibility. When the Qatar contracts come up for renegotiation, the priority should be the right to defer or divert in a soft year and to recall volume, or claim priority on extra volume, in a tight one. The Eni settlement, which shares both profit and loss on diverted cargoes, is a better model than an NPD clause that sends all the upside to the seller.
The second is a winter allocation plan published before the cold arrives. The ad hoc approach of 2026, deciding cargo by cargo at the highest level of government, leaves fertiliser plants, exporters and power producers unable to plan. A published order of curtailment, with the volumes each sector can expect under different cargo scenarios, would let firms arrange alternatives rather than discover the shortfall at the burner tip.
The third is to stop curtailing domestic gas during gluts. In late 2025, officials said around 310 million cubic feet a day of local production was being held back because line pack pressure in the transmission network was too high, the pipelines being full of imported gas the country was contractually obliged to take. Domestic fields are the one source that Hormuz cannot close. Keeping them producing, and directing imported volume to wherever it is most flexible, is the cheapest insurance Pakistan has.
The current winter will be managed with the tools at hand: diplomacy to secure Qatari passage, spot purchases where affordable, furnace oil at the evening peak, and rationing for households and industry. The portfolio that comes out of it should be designed so that the next disruption, wherever it comes from, does not leave the country choosing which kitchens and factories go without.