KARACHI/WASHINGTON D.C. — Pakistan has officially approved the import of US crude oil for the first time in its history. This is a big change from the country’s long-standing dependence on energy supplies from the Middle East. This historic deal comes just months after US President Donald Trump threatened to impose high tariffs on Pakistani exports. The development seems to have made Islamabad rethink and expand its commercial and energy ties with Washington.
Cnergyico, Pakistan’s biggest oil refiner, would buy 1 million barrels of American West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude from global commodity trader Vitol in October 2025. Usama Qureshi, the vice chairman of Cnergyico, told Reuters on Friday that this was true.
“This is a test spot cargo that falls under our umbrella term agreement with Vitol.” Qureshi said, “If it is commercially viable and available, we could import at least one cargo per month.” He stressed that the shipment is just for internal consumption and not for resale. The cargo is set to be loaded in Houston later this month and should arrive in Karachi in the second half of October.
A Response to Tariff Pressures
This historic oil accord is the end of months of talks that started in April 2025. The talks really picked up speed after President Trump said he might put 29% tariffs on goods coming from Pakistan. Qureshi said that in reaction to the threat of tariffs, Pakistan’s finance and petroleum ministries actively urged local refineries to look into the possibility of importing crude oil from the United States.
Oil is very important to Pakistan; it is the country’s biggest import. Pakistan’s oil shipments were worth $11.3 billion in the fiscal year that ended on June 30, 2025. This was almost a quarter of the country’s entire import bill. The new import pact with the US is likely to help Pakistan get oil from more than only Middle Eastern suppliers, which is what it does now.
Qureshi pointed out that US crude oil is commercially viable because the “Gross refining margin is on par with Gulf grades, and no blending or refinery tweaks are required.” This means that Cnergyico’s current refinery equipment can handle the imported US crude. The company also wants to build a second offshore terminal and improve its refinery in the next five to six years so that it can handle bigger or more regular shipments.
A bigger trade deal between the US and Pakistan and “huge oil reserves”
This pact to import oil is part of a bigger trade deal between the US and Pakistan that President Trump announced yesterday. Trump said that Washington would help Islamabad utilize its “massive oil reserves” as part of this larger agreement.
But it’s still not clear what these “massive oil reserves” in Pakistan are or how big they are. Pakistan’s known conventional crude oil reserves are thought to be rather small, between 234 million and 353 million barrels (as of 2016 statistics). This puts it about 50th in the world. Geological investigations, especially in Pakistan’s Offshore Indus Basin, have pointed to possible hydrocarbon formations, and some guesswork has led to the idea that there are huge amounts of unconventional shale oil, but commercial drilling has not yet verified these assertions. The Kekra-1 well and other offshore drilling operations have not produced any commercial results.
Trump didn’t say which firms would be participating in this possible oil reserve development or what the new trade agreement would mean for Pakistani imports in terms of levies. Islamabad, on the other hand, is hopeful that the deal would lead to lower tariffs and more investment. However, no particular information on the tariff cuts has been made public yet.
This new energy collaboration is a big step forward in US-Pakistan ties. It was made possible by a complicated mix of trade pressures, the need for energy security diversification, and bigger geopolitical concerns.