ENERGY does not flow freely. It moves through pipelines, ports and political agreements, and when any one of those breaks down, the consequences spread far beyond the country where the disruption began. The 1973 oil embargo, the Iran-Iraq tanker war, the Russia-Ukraine energy crisis: each was a reminder that the global energy system is not just an economic mechanism but a deeply geographic one. Supply routes, transit corridors and chokepoints are not background detail. They determine who has leverage and who does not.

Pakistan sits at one of those crossroads. Positioned along the Arabian Sea at the intersection of the Middle East, Central Asia and South Asia, it links regions that account for a significant share of global energy production and consumption. That is the kind of positioning countries spend decades trying to engineer. Pakistan has it by default and has spent decades failing to use it.

Three projects were meant to change that: TAPI, the Iran-Pakistan pipeline and Gwadar Port. All three were serious attempts to turn location into leverage. All three remain unfinished.

TAPI was conceived in the 1990s to carry up to 33 billion cubic meters of gas annually. Pakistan stood to earn transit fees from........

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