Lucky Group-Qatar Energy Consortium Abandons Port Qasim LNG Terminal Plan

Energas, the consortium of the Lucky Group and QatarEnergy behind a long-planned liquefied natural gas terminal at Port Qasim, has told Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif it is abandoning the project, Dawn reported on October 26. The Port Qasim Authority (PQA) has warned it will terminate the project's final letter of intent (LOI) and forfeit a $2 million concession fee unless Energas gives "unconditional acceptance" of the terms by November 30, 2026.

Energas chairman Muhammad Ali Tabba wrote to the prime minister seeking a refund of the $2 million fee, arguing the consortium is not at fault for the project's collapse. He described the shift as "a fundamental change in national energy policy and requirements, resulting in a clear frustration of purpose," according to Dawn. Profit, the business desk of Pakistan Today, confirmed the same core facts in its own report on October 27, citing Tabba's letter and PQA's position.

Why the economics stopped working

The consortium received its provisional LOI for the terminal in May 2020. At the time, the LNG Policy 2011 offered new terminals a five-year income-tax holiday from their commercial operations date. That exemption was withdrawn for new projects in June 2021, a change reportedly tied to conditions attached to Pakistan's IMF programme.

The case for building a new terminal weakened further in March 2025, when the government's Integrated Energy Study concluded Pakistan would not need additional LNG import capacity over the following five years. Energas also pointed to a longer list of unresolved issues: pipeline capacity to move gas from the terminal, gas transportation agreements with distribution companies, allocation of the tie-in area, and exemptions from third-party access rules and income tax, none of which it says the government settled despite earlier commitments.

What the port authority says

PQA rejects the consortium's framing of the $2 million payment. It says the sum is a partial concession fee under Clause 2.6(i) of the Project Guidelines 2019, not a refundable advance, and that Paragraph 27 of the final LOI requires termination and forfeiture if Energas does not accept the terms by the deadline. The authority says developers, not the government, are responsible for securing financing, pipeline capacity and the regulatory approvals Energas lists as obstacles.

Neither side's account resolves who bears responsibility for the stalled infrastructure arrangements. Energas says the government never delivered the policy certainty it was promised when the project was conceived; PQA says the burden of meeting the project's conditions always sat with the developer.

Part of a wider winter supply picture

The collapse of a planned new terminal comes as Pakistan already leans harder on its existing LNG supply chain. QatarEnergy's long-term supply contracts have been under force majeure since March 2026, after an Iranian strike curtailed its Ras Laffan export capacity, pushing Pakistan toward costlier spot-market cargoes. Officials have projected the winter LNG import bill at about $1.29 billion between November 2026 and February 2027, with roughly half the needed cargoes now bought on the open market at close to double the contracted price. A fourth terminal was never going to change this winter's arithmetic, but its abandonment removes a source of future import capacity just as the country is relying more heavily on expensive spot cargoes to get through the cold months, and comes alongside separate reports of hoarding and price spikes in the LPG cylinder market that depends on different supply routes.

What to watch

The November 30 deadline is the next concrete date in the dispute. Neither the Petroleum Division nor the Prime Minister's Office has publicly responded to Tabba's letter, and Dawn's report did not say whether other prospective terminal developers face similar conditions under the same 2019 Project Guidelines.

Build Better Pakistan's Energy Desk is tracking the Port Qasim dispute and will update this piece once the government responds or the November 30 deadline passes.