ISLAMABAD: Pakistan has deferred its liquefied natural gas (LNG) contract with Qatar for a year, Petroleum Minister Musadik Malik has said that the country will now get LNG cargoes from Qatar in 2026 instead of 2025.
Annual power use in Pakistan, which gets over a third of its electricity from natural gas, has declined 8-10% year-on-year over the past three quarters, the country’s power minister told Reuters in November, primarily due to higher tariffs curbing household consumption.
The South Asian nation has deferred five LNG cargoes from Qatar and is also negotiating to defer five cargoes with other markets, he told journalists, without disclosing the names of the countries.
The government, in November, announced a slash in electricity tariffs during winter in a bid to boost consumption and cut the use of natural gas for heating.
Many power utilities in Pakistan have had to curtail or even completely cease operations in winter months due to demand dropping by up to 60% from peak summer levels.
In an interview with Reuters in June, Malik said that Pakistan is unlikely to buy LNG cargoes on the spot market until at least the beginning of winter in November due to oversupply and high prices.
Malik also denied local media reports that Pakistan was closing a deal to import one cargo of crude oil from Russia each month, starting January.
He has said that Islamabad has not concluded a deal with Moscow.
Malik said his government had restarted talks with Russia and the government was looking to solve obstacles such as “insurance, reinsurance, deal structure, shipping lines and ship cargo size”.
The caretaker government, set up to oversee a national election earlier this year in February, decided to not conduct any government-to-government deal with Russia, allowing the private sector to step in, Malik said.
Pakistan signed a deal with Russia in 2023 to import crude oil that it would then refine locally.
The agreement included a 100,000 metric ton shipment to state-owned Pakistan Refinery Limited.
Under that arrangement, Pakistan paid for the crude at a discounted rate using Chinese yuan.
In October 2023, Pakistan refiner Cnergyico imported the country’s first private-sector shipment of Russian crude oil.
