Reality check: American oil hunt in Pakistan may serve as cover for US military presence

Are we supposed to take the whimsical words of a political leader blurted out in crude language on a social media site at face value? The answer, if we were living in a time where leaders meant what they said and stuck to their words, would be a yes. But then we have a new normal in which the President of the United States, seen as the planet’s most powerful person, summarily describes the economies of Russia and India as “dead” and then in the same breath says the US will explore oil in Pakistan – with the outrageous -sounding prospect that it may sell oil to India someday in the future.

While much of the global and media attention has been rightly on US president Donald Trump’s 25% tariffs and penalty on Indian goods ahead of an expected trade pact that potentially hurts India, for all we know, his talk of an oil hunt in Pakistan, so far dismissed as a fantasy in view of some ground realities, may be a red herring to divert attention from something potentially more serious.

We know Trump as a negotiator who is willing to go back and forth from his whimsical and often strong positions on trade, inviting the tag of TACO (Trump Always Chickens Out). But it might make more sense if we do not take some of his other statements at face-value and try and figure out if there is a different intent behind his words.

The obvious may not be the real.

My guess, given the geopolitical significance of the Arabian Sea for US foreign policy, is that the White House and the State Department may be setting the stage for increased American military presence in the region – because Washington is obviously mindful of the fact that both Iran and China, its prime adversaries on the global chessboard, are close to the scene of action.

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Recent US missile strikes on Iran’s nuclear installations in what seemed like a one-sided pounding may be a sign of things to come, rather than a done and dusted event. Even during the days of Democrat rule, Pakistan was a geopolitical ally of the US, although under pressure to be a democracy. But nothing has changed in the fact that Pakistan’s powerful army is looking for deals, locations and clients to further its interests – and we might just have swapped Iran for Afghanistan in the latest move.

Those looking at hard, credible data are reading the tea leaves in the numbers surrounding crude oil reserves in Pakistan. Global energy data estimates Pakistan’s oil reserves at between 234 to 353 million barrels, compared to India, which holds about 5 billion barrels, which is 14 times larger. In global oil rankings, Pakistan is beyond 50 compared with India’s 20-odd in proven reserves. Pakistan’s daily output of 60,000 barrels per day is only a tenth of India’s estimated 600,000 barrels per day.

That doesn’t quite add up, particularly when you consider that the world is trying to reduce the consumption of carbon-based fossil fuels amid the backdrop of frenetic growth in environmentally friendly energy sources such as solar, wind, and green hydrogen. A long-stretch explanation is that US energy authorities about a decade ago estimated Pakistan to have 9.1 billion barrels in shale oil resources, compared with India’s 3.8 billion barrels.

It is true that the US has its own rich supplies of shale oil, which has helped soften global crude prices, and there are analysts, including consulting firm PriceWaterhouse, who believe this could ease global oil prices by as much as 40% by 2035.

That does tally with the fact that Trump has pulled out of the Paris accord on climate change, which basically marks an aggressive push to retain economic advantage based on carbon fuels. On the very first day of his second term on January 20, Trump signed an executive order to withdraw the US from the Paris Agreement on climate change that would have reduced fossil fuel consumption.

Here’s where it does get tricky. On the one hand, US has its own shale oil supplies, and it will cost a lot of money to dig for oil in Pakistan. Is it worth it?

The exact words of Trump on his Truth Social site might help: "We have just concluded a deal with the country of Pakistan, whereby Pakistan and the United States will work together on developing their massive oil reserves.”

Was Trump’s reference to “country of Pakistan” an implicit put-down of Balochistan’s separatists in the mineral-rich province? Mir Yar Baloch, a separatist leader from Balochistan, has written to Trump after the Truth Social post, saying “oil, natural gas, copper, lithium, uranium and rare earth minerals” are indeed present in his province, but in the “Republic of Balochistan” and not Pakistan.

Whatever the nuance, it seems the US now has either a geo-economic or geopolitical foothold in Pakistan or nearabouts on the Arabian Sea, ably assisted by uniformed generals in Islamabad. This is being somewhat naively discounted or overlooked in media reports that emphasize more on the fact that Pakistan is a net oil importer (accounting for 85% of its crude consumption) and its oil reserves are exaggerated.

A day after Trump’s ranting post, Pakistan’s Oil & Gas Development Company Limited (OGDCL) announced an oil discovery in Sindh in a licence that signalled an output of 275 barrels of oil per day.

But the number may be irrelevant and more like a red herring to divert attention from deeper truths. It seems all this is more about Balochistan separatists, a counter to neighbouring Iran and a long-shot attempt at containing China, which is lording over a critical port at Gwadar in Balochistan.

Tensions have been brewing between the US and Iran for a while now especially after the October 2023 Hamas attacks in Israel, followed by the Gaza (Palestine) crisis and the conflict involving Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen. The US has military bases and warships across a West Asian swathe with an estimated presence of 40,000 troops in Qatar, Bahrain, Iraq, Syria, Kuwait, and the UAE. But Balochistan is situated far away. America’s oil hunt may well be a proxy or excuse to for a foothold on or off Pakistan’s Sindh and/or the Balochistan coastline.

China has a huge economic presence in Pakistan through its infrastructure-centred China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), involving investments estimated at $65 billion in 2022. But there is no Chinese military presence in Pakistan, though Beijing and Islamabad have had joint military exercises. Chinese personnel involved in CPEC projects have faced security threats. Since 2017, Pakistan’s Gwadar port has been handed over to a Chinese state company on a 40-year lease.

A US presence in Gwadar or its neighbourhood would thus give Washington a vital presence in the Arabian Sea.

All that should help us connect some dots, including Trump’s stately White House luncheon for Pakistan’s army chief, Asim Munir, even as India targeted him and Islamabad for backing terror attacks in Kashmir. We also need to weigh in the remark of a key US general that Pakistan is a “phenomenal partner” in Washington’s counter-terrorism efforts.

In November last year, at least 32 people were killed in a suicide bombing claimed by the Balochistan Liberation Army at the railway station in Quetta, Balochistan’s capital city. On March 11 this year, BLA militants hijacked the Jaffar Express carrying 440 passengers in nine coaches on its way from Quetta to Peshawar, derailed it by using explosives near a mountainous tunnel mid-journey 160 km from Quetta. Pakistan’s army put the number of killed at 64, including 33 attackers.

Weeks later, Munir spoke belligerently about Kashmir being critical for Pakistan, and on April 22, a terror attack in Pahalgam in Kashmir killed 25 Indian tourists and a Nepali visitor, possibly triggering a new chain of geopolitical events.

The chronology suggests that Pakistan’s army wants a stronger grip on its neighbourhood and territories, including Balochistan. US-Iran frictions and Washington’s trade war with China only make it easier for the generals in Islamabad to extend a warm handshake to Uncle Sam with whom it has a rocky but long-standing arrangement to offer logistical and intelligence support. The oil hunt may thus well be a forerunner to offer a path for the US military that has no South Asian presence after its troops departed from Taliban-controlled Kabul in 2021.

At the very least, the American oil hunt gives Pakistan’s army an expense account signed by the US Congress or oil companies to increase its influence amid a crisis in the local economy. A lot would now depend on how the Trump Administration juggles its multiple ends: trade wars, oil politics and a hunt for rare earth minerals in a shift to new industrial opportunities.