Daily Times Editorials 19th September 2026

No Cushion

With traffic through the Strait of Hormuz still badly disrupted, Pakistan has emerged among the countries most vulnerable to interruptions in gas supplies. Qatar and the UAE provide about 99 per cent of Pakistan’s LNG, while imported gas now accounts for roughly 30 per cent of total gas supply. That concentration was always going to become a liability once the Gulf turned into a war zone.

The problem is not simply that ships cannot move freely. Pakistan has built an energy system with little room to absorb such shocks. LNG feeds power generation, fertiliser production and industry, while domestic gas output has been falling for years. When one maritime chokepoint is disturbed, the consequences move quickly from the Gulf to factories, electricity generation and ultimately household bills.

There is an awkward irony here. Only months ago, Pakistan was dealing with excess LNG cargoes because domestic demand had weakened. Now the debate has swung towards shortages, expensive spot purchases and securing fresh long-term supplies. The speed of that reversal says plenty about how little flexibility exists between contracted volumes, domestic consumption and storage.History

That is why discussions at Gastech over gas-storage facilities deserve attention. Pakistan has almost no strategic cushion for gas. Long-term supply contracts can reduce price uncertainty, but they cannot keep Hormuz open. Storage would at least give policymakers time to respond when shipments are delayed rather than forcing the economy immediately into conservation mode.

Gas disruptions have already pushed the government towards greater use of coal, hydropower and nuclear generation, while the Gastech report has also urged faster investment in solar, wind and storage. None offers an overnight escape. Coal carries its own import and environmental costs; hydropower depends on projects and water flows, and solar without storage cannot cover every hour of demand.

Pakistan therefore needs a broader definition of energy security. It means domestic generation where possible, diversified import routes where necessary, strategic stocks, a more flexible grid and enough storage to survive temporary disruption without reorganising the economy around it.

The urgency is visible outside Pakistan as well. Hormuz traffic remains far below normal levels, and on Thursday, only four commodity vessels crossed the strait, compared with a 10-day average of 16.

At the end of the day, the government may not control that traffic, yet it can still decide how exposed Pakistan remains to it. *

‘Autonomy’ at a Price

India has spent the past four years defending its purchases of Russian oil as an exercise in national interest. Cheap crude helped contain the import bill, shield consumers from some of the fallout of the Ukraine war and allowed New Delhi to insist that its foreign policy would not be written in Washington. That argument is now facing its most difficult test.

The US Congress has passed legislation giving President Donald Trump authority to impose tariffs of up to 100 per cent on major buyers of Russian energy. India is squarely in the frame. The measure has not yet translated into a 100 per cent tariff, and much will depend on how Trump chooses to use the powers Congress has handed him. The threat alone, however, has already unsettled a relationship that New Delhi spent years describing as one of the defining partnerships of the century.

For context, India imports more than 88 per cent of the crude it consumes and Russian barrels now account for more than 40 per cent of supplies and have climbed further since Middle Eastern disruptions tightened the market. The United States, meanwhile, remains India’s largest export destination. Cutting Russian oil sharply risks higher fuel costs and greater pressure on government finances. Carrying on as before exposes Indian exporters to a potentially punishing tariff regime.

This is where the mythology around “strategic autonomy” begins to look less convincing. New Delhi wanted discounted Russian energy, a close defence relationship with Moscow, membership of the Quad, access to American technology and investment, and preferential entry into Western markets. For several years, it managed to have most of these things at the same time.

That room for manoeuvre was never guaranteed.

India was able to increase Russian purchases after 2022 partly because Washington valued it as a counterweight to China and tolerated a degree of divergence. The new legislation shows how quickly such tolerance can narrow when American domestic politics and the Ukraine war move in another direction.

There is another complication. Russian crude is no longer automatically synonymous with a bargain. Urals prices have climbed sharply, while ESPO has traded above $120 a barrel as Asian buyers scramble for supply. The commercial case that once made New Delhi’s defiance easier to sell is therefore becoming less straightforward.

India is right to warn that sweeping secondary tariffs could disrupt global energy markets and hurt American consumers as well. Washington’s policy is hardly free of contradiction, and forcing major buyers out of Russian crude overnight could send prices even higher.

Still, that does not erase New Delhi’s own miscalculation. A foreign policy built around multiple partnerships works only while the interests of those partners remain compatible enough to permit hedging.

India now finds itself dependent on Russian oil and American demand at the same time. Neither relationship can be wished away, and neither can be managed through slogans about autonomy. *