ISLAMABAD: Pakistan’s total petroleum import bill climbed 2.23 percent to $14.953 billion in the first eleven months of fiscal year 2025-26, the Pakistan Bureau of Statistics reported Monday but strip away the headline number and the data underneath reveals an energy sector pulling sharply in two opposite directions at the same time.
Pakistan Crude Oil Imports Surge 27%
Crude oil imports surged 27.29 percent year-on-year, jumping from $4.981 billion to $6.341 billion between July and May. Pakistan’s refineries ran harder and bought more feedstock, driven by a rebound in industrial production and economic growth that pushed domestic fuel demand back up after two years of economic contraction. Sources confirmed to Focus Pakistan that refinery intake increased as economic activity recovered, pulling crude purchases well above prior-year levels.
Pakistan LNG Imports Record Sharp Decline
LNG told the exact opposite story. Pakistan spent $2.016 billion on liquefied natural gas imports during July-May, down 37.21 percent from $3.211 billion in the same period last year one of the sharpest annual drops in the fuel category on record. The collapse in LNG spending reflects a structural shift that energy analysts have flagged for months. Pakistan experienced a significant decline in LNG consumption as persistently high LNG prices rendered gas-based power generation uncompetitive, pushing LNG plants down the economic merit order. The power sector reportedly consumed only 510 mmcfd of LNG against an allocated capacity of 800 mmcfd, while exporting industries slashed their consumption from 350 mmcfd to just 100 mmcfd.
Also Read: Pakistan Cuts $15m Monthly LNG Bill After Negotiations With Terminal Operators
Solar Power Reshapes Pakistan Energy Imports
Solar power ate into the market that LNG power plants once held. As rooftop and grid-scale solar capacity expanded across Pakistan through 2024 and 2025, the economics of running an expensive gas-fired plant against cheap solar generation stopped making sense and plant operators stopped running them at full capacity. Pakistan ultimately had to renegotiate its long-term supply agreements with Qatar and Italian gas producer ENI, reselling 45 excess LNG cargoes to regional markets between 2026 and 2027.
Petroleum products refined fuels like diesel, motor spirit, and jet fuel rose 2.86 percent to $5.612 billion, reflecting steady transport fuel demand. Transport dominates petroleum consumption in Pakistan, accounting for roughly 80 percent of petroleum product usage, making the country’s oil dependence fundamentally a mobility problem, according to energy analyst Amer Zafar Durrani. LPG imports held nearly flat at $983.698 million, up just 0.10 percent from $982.753 million a year earlier.
On a monthly basis, May 2026 petroleum imports hit $1.436 billion, up 7.84 percent year-on-year from $1.332 billion in May 2025 a reading that suggests import momentum picked up heading into the final month of the fiscal year. Month-on-month, however, imports fell 36.78 percent from April 2026’s $2.271 billion, reflecting seasonal demand patterns and shipping cycles rather than any structural demand shift.
What Pakistan Petroleum Imports Reveal About the Economy
The divergence between surging crude and collapsing LNG imports carries significant fiscal implications. Every dollar spent on crude oil feeds domestic refining capacity and generates taxable refined product output. Every dollar saved on LNG, by contrast, reflects suppressed industrial and power sector activity that economists say Pakistan needs to revive if it wants sustained GDP growth through fiscal year 2026-27.
The full-year petroleum import number, when PBS releases it after June data lands, will determine whether Pakistan managed to keep its overall energy import bill below the $16 billion mark that policymakers had targeted in IMF programme discussions earlier this year.
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