There is a cruel arithmetic to Pakistan’s economy. Two waterways most Pakistanis will never see, one about 21 miles wide at its narrowest, the other barely 18, now help decide what a family in Sargodha pays for flour, what a weaver in Faisalabad pays to run his looms, and what arrives on an electricity bill in Karachi.

That is not rhetoric. It is the transmission mechanism, and it has been running at full speed since February.

Before the current disruption, roughly 21 million barrels of oil and petroleum products moved through the Strait of Hormuz every day, close to a fifth of global petroleum consumption. According to the US Energy Information Administration, that collapsed to about 4.9 million barrels per day in the second quarter of 2026. LNG flows fell just as sharply.

The difference between the economies that bend in 2026 and those that break is not luck or geography.

The difference between the economies that bend in 2026 and those that break is not luck or geography.

Bab el-Mandeb, the gateway between the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, carried around 8.1 million barrels per day in the same quarter. Vessels avoiding it now sail around the Cape of Good Hope, adding weeks of fuel, time and insurance to every cargo.

For Pakistan, though, the more uncomfortable question is not what happened to oil prices. It is why the same shock lands so much harder here than on our neighbours. Why the same blow hurts us more?

The answer is structural, and it begins with a coincidence that should worry us more than it does.

The IMF estimates that 81 per cent of Pakistan’s fuel imports come from Gulf Cooperation Council countries. Remittances, meanwhile, are worth about 9 per cent of GDP, and roughly 55 per cent of them come from the same GCC states. Our energy lifeline and our foreign exchange lifeline run through identical geography. When that geography catches fire, both arteries are cut at once.

What follows is depressingly mechanical. Expensive oil means more dollars needed to buy the same fuel. The import bill swells. Demand for dollars rises. The rupee comes under pressure. Imported fuel becomes costlier still in rupee terms. Transport costs climb, production costs follow, and eventually the price of wheat, vegetables and cooking oil catches up.

The data........

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