Balochistan Powered Pakistan With Gas for Decades but Development Gap Persists

ISLAMABAD, PAKISTAN — WEB DESK: Balochistan’s natural gas reserves have powered Pakistan’s homes, industries and economy for decades, but some of the province’s most resource-rich districts remain among the country’s least developed, highlighting a persistent divide between resource extraction and socioeconomic progress.

Dera Bugti, home to the historic Sui gas field and several other producing fields, once supplied the overwhelming majority of Pakistan’s natural gas.

According to figures cited by petroleum engineer and oil and gas management professional Shahbaz Khan in an analysis published by The Express Tribune, Balochistan was meeting about 82% of Pakistan’s natural gas requirements until 1982, with the supply coming from Dera Bugti alone.

The province’s contribution was still about 55% in 1995 before falling to around 25% a decade later. It currently remains around 20%, according to the analysis.

The decline reflects ageing and depleting fields, while security problems and limited exploration have complicated efforts to discover sufficient replacement reserves.

Much of Balochistan remains unexplored

Despite its long history as an energy-producing province, Balochistan remains significantly underexplored for hydrocarbons.

Of roughly 1,250 exploratory wells drilled across Pakistan, only about 6% have been drilled in Balochistan, according to figures cited in the analysis.

It estimates that around 90% of the province remains largely unexplored.

That presents both an opportunity and a challenge for Pakistan, which has increasingly relied on imported energy as domestic hydrocarbon production has declined.

Expanding exploration could potentially uncover new reserves, but companies require security, infrastructure, regulatory certainty and cooperation with local communities before committing substantial long-term investment.

Pakistan’s domestic gas production has declined

Pakistan’s indigenous hydrocarbon production has fallen considerably from its previous peaks.

Gas production reached around 4,300 million standard cubic feet per day (mmscfd) in 2012, while domestic oil production peaked at approximately 95,000 barrels per day in 2015, according to the analysis.

Current production is cited at approximately 3,100 mmscfd of gas and 72,000 barrels per day of oil.

Many older producing fields are now at advanced stages of depletion, while newer discoveries have not replaced reserves quickly enough.

The result has increased pressure on Pakistan’s energy system and strengthened the economic case for additional domestic exploration.

Resource wealth has not translated into equal development

The central challenge, however, extends beyond production figures.

Oil and gas producing districts generate substantial revenues through royalties, taxes, production bonuses and other payments, but the socioeconomic conditions of surrounding communities have often failed to improve at a comparable pace.

Dera Bugti provides one of the clearest examples.

Natural gas was discovered at Sui No. 1 in 1952, transforming the area into one of the foundations of Pakistan’s energy system.

Yet the district continues to face severe development challenges decades later.

The analysis cites a Sustainable Development Policy Institute study placing Dera Bugti’s Human Development Index at 0.236, leaving it among Pakistan’s 10 least-developed districts.

HDI broadly evaluates development through indicators covering health, education and standards of living.

The report cited in the analysis says all 10 districts at the bottom of the ranking are in Balochistan, illustrating the scale of the province’s socioeconomic challenge.

Better use of energy revenues urged

The analysis argues that a stronger community-development model is needed to ensure resource-producing areas receive more lasting benefits from extraction.

One proposal is to conduct a comprehensive assessment of communities surrounding oil and gas fields, measuring changes in health, education, employment and overall human development since production began.

Greater emphasis could also be placed on technical and vocational education, scholarships for engineering students and programmes designed to build alternative local industries.

Small and medium-sized industrial cooperatives, agricultural processing facilities, technical workshops, warehouses and other businesses could help communities reduce their dependence on individual oil and gas projects.

Such diversification could be particularly important for areas surrounding ageing fields such as Sui, where declining reserves will eventually require local economies to find alternative sources of employment and income.

Community relations tied to security

The analysis also links socioeconomic exclusion with Balochistan’s security environment, arguing that persistent deprivation can contribute to alienation and undermine trust between local communities, companies and the state.

It calls for energy exploration and production companies to avoid relying excessively on politically influential local intermediaries and instead create transparent, merit-based systems for employment, procurement and corporate social responsibility.

Respect for local communities, traditions and elders is also identified as important for maintaining trust.

The argument is that communities are more likely to support energy projects when they see tangible improvements in employment, education, infrastructure and economic opportunity.

Energy security and development increasingly connected

For Pakistan, Balochistan’s untapped hydrocarbon potential could become increasingly important as existing domestic fields decline and imported energy places pressure on foreign-exchange reserves.

But expanding exploration without addressing the development expectations of communities in producing regions risks repeating longstanding problems.

More than seven decades after the Sui discovery, the contrast remains striking: Dera Bugti helped fuel Pakistan’s national development, yet its own human-development indicators remain weak.

Closing that divide could therefore serve two objectives simultaneously — strengthening Balochistan’s socioeconomic development while creating conditions more conducive to investment and exploration.

The province’s next chapter as an energy producer may ultimately depend not only on what lies beneath the ground, but also on whether the wealth generated above it translates into meaningful improvements for the communities living there.