LPG Marketers Announce Nationwide Strike From 16 November Over New Pricing Formula

By TaazaPulse News Desk · Published: 30 October 2026 · TaazaPulse News Desk

Pakistan's LPG marketers have announced a nationwide strike from 16 November, escalating a confrontation with the government over a proposed new pricing formula and a draft LPG policy that the industry says was drawn up without any input from the private sector. The Pakistan LPG Marketers Association says sales of liquefied petroleum gas across the country will stop on that date if its demands are not accepted — a threat that lands at the worst possible moment for consumers, with the official November price already higher, open-market prices running at roughly double the official rate, and a shortage linked to the closure of the border with Iran squeezing supply.

The announcement, reported by Business Recorder on 31 October and carried in Dawn's reporting of the LPG market on 1 November, is the sharpest warning yet in a dispute that has been building all autumn. It is also a conditional threat, not a strike already under way: the marketers say they will stop selling if the government goes ahead with a policy that sidelines private companies or reverses the deregulation of the LPG sector. Fifteen days remain before the deadline, and in that window the government has already created an eight-member ministerial committee to review the reform package. Whether that committee becomes a negotiating table or merely a delaying device will decide whether kitchens across Pakistan face a supply stoppage in the second half of November.

For households, the stakes are direct. LPG is the cooking fuel of choice for millions of homes without piped natural gas, and for many more in areas where gas pressure fails in winter. A nationwide stoppage by the companies that market and distribute the fuel would not merely raise prices — it would remove the fuel from shops altogether, at the start of the season when demand rises fastest. That is why the announcement qualifies as a top story rather than an industry press release: it is a dated, named, nationwide threat, made by an identifiable association, with stated demands, and it follows a week in which the official price, the market price and the policy argument have all moved at once.

What the marketers announced, and what they want

Speaking for the association, Ali Haider said LPG sales across the country would stop from 16 November if the authorities failed to accept the industry's demands. The demand at the centre of the announcement is that the private sector must not be sidelined in the upcoming LPG policy, and that the government must not reverse the deregulation of the sector. In the association's telling, the draft policy sent to the prime minister contained no input from the private sector at all — a claim the association has put in writing to Petroleum Minister Ali Pervaiz Malik. Its call, in short, is for complete deregulation of the LPG sector, with private marketers and importers keeping the role they have held since the market was opened up.

Two features of the announcement deserve emphasis because they are easy to misreport. First, the strike is dated but conditional: 16 November is the date from which sales would stop, and the condition is the government proceeding with a policy the association opposes without meeting its demands. It is not a report that sales have already stopped, and it is not an indefinite shutdown announced without a deadline. Second, the association making the announcement is the Pakistan LPG Marketers Association — the marketing companies — not the LPG Distributors Association, whose chairman, Irfan Khokhar, has been speaking separately about the shortage and market manipulation. The two bodies represent different links in the same chain, and their statements, while pointing in the same direction this week, are not interchangeable. Conflating them would misattribute both the strike call and the shortage warnings.

The association's letter to the petroleum minister is the documentary anchor of the dispute. According to the reporting, it states plainly that the draft policy sent to the prime minister contained no private-sector input, and it asks for the sector to be fully deregulated rather than reorganised around state-owned enterprises. That framing matters because it turns the argument from a quarrel about one price into a quarrel about who runs the market: private companies that import, bottle and distribute LPG, or state-owned companies that would take over imports and price-setting under the proposed reforms.

The policy the marketers are opposing

The reform package at the centre of the dispute was submitted by the Petroleum Division and has been reported in detail from official documents. Under it, state-owned enterprises — Pakistan State Oil, the Sui gas companies, Pak-Arab Refinery and Pakistan LNG — would enter the LPG import market, and monthly pricing would move to an import-parity model linked to Saudi Aramco rates and actual import expenses. The Oil and Gas Regulatory Authority, which has set the monthly notified price for years, would stop issuing those notifications. Financial proposals from bidders for state imports would be exempt from publication on the public procurement website, to align with general market practice. Ten percent of domestic LPG production would be reserved for state marketers supplying remote areas such as Gilgit-Baltistan, while the remaining ninety percent would be sold through monthly auctions to prequalified bottlers. Excess funds generated from the gap between local and import prices would go into a dedicated public account, audited by the Auditor General of Pakistan, to finance targeted subsidies through the Benazir Income Support Programme. Marketer margins would rise from Rs35,000 to a minimum of Rs50,000 per tonne as an inflation adjustment.

Read as a whole, the package is a redesign of the market, not a tweak to a price. It moves the benchmark, the importer, the price-setter and the subsidy mechanism at the same time. The marketers' objection is correspondingly broad: they argue that state enterprises have limited experience importing LPG, that relying solely on Saudi pricing benchmarks could raise costs further for consumers — because much of Pakistan's private supply originates from Iran and Oman rather than Saudi Arabia — and that excluding the private sector from the design of the new system guarantees a system the private sector cannot operate. The government side of that argument, as reported so far, is that the current system has failed to protect consumers: official prices and market prices have diverged so far that the notified price no longer describes what anyone actually pays, and a state-led import-parity system would close that gap.

One important qualification: the reform package is proposed, not yet in force. The clearest proof is the November price itself. Under the proposal, OGRA would stop notifying prices — yet OGRA did notify a November price, and it is that notification, not the proposed import-parity benchmark, that sets the official rate consumers are supposed to pay this month. Readers should therefore treat the strike announcement as a dispute about a policy still under review, not as a reaction to a policy already imposed. The prime minister's eight-member ministerial committee, given one month to examine the reform package, cylinder standards and the local LPG framework before reporting back, is the formal evidence that the decision is still open.

The November price, and the gap that makes it almost theoretical

OGRA's November notification raised the official LPG price to Rs294,075 per tonne, up from Rs279,341 in October. The official consumer price is Rs294.1 per kilogram, and the standard 11.8-kilogram domestic cylinder rises to Rs3,470 from Rs3,296. The regulator attributed the increase to a 6.47 percent rise in the Saudi Aramco contract price, partly offset by a 0.12 percent fall in the average dollar exchange rate, lifting the consumer price by Rs14.73 per kilogram. A 45.4-kilogram commercial cylinder rises by Rs669 to Rs13,351, raising costs for tandoors, hotels and other businesses that cook on LPG.

Those are the official figures. The market figures tell a different story, and the distance between the two is the reason this dispute is about more than a formula. In the open market, LPG is selling at up to Rs630 per kilogram — more than double the official rate — while company-operated franchises are charging up to Rs400 per kilogram. A household paying the open-market rate for a standard cylinder is therefore paying far more than the Rs3,470 official price, and the gap has been widening for weeks: October reporting already put street prices at Rs550 to Rs750 per kilogram in different markets, with cylinders reported at around Rs5,000 against a notified Rs3,296. The November notification narrows the official price upward by Rs14.73 per kilogram, but it does not close a gap measured in hundreds of rupees.

That gap is also why the strike threat carries weight beyond the marketers' own sales. When the official price does not describe the market, a stoppage does not merely remove the cheapest supply — it removes supply from a market already short, in which the marginal cylinder is already the expensive one. Households that cannot find LPG at any price switch to firewood, kerosene or electric cooking, each with its own cost and, in the case of firewood indoors, its own health risk. Small food businesses, which buy in commercial cylinders, either absorb the increase, raise prices, or close for the day. The strike's leverage comes precisely from that chain: it is not the price that would hurt most, but the absence.

Why supply is short: the Iran border and the import arithmetic

The shortage behind the price pressure has a specific cause, and both sides of the industry agree on its outlines. Irfan Khokhar, chairman of the LPG Distributors Association, has said the situation is serious because of the closure of the Iran border, and that at least seventy percent of Pakistan's LPG is imported from Iran while thirty percent is produced locally. He has called on the government to make serious efforts to control market manipulation. The marketers' association attributes the shortage to the same closure. The regional backdrop is the United States-Iran war, which has disrupted shipping through the Strait of Hormuz and overland trade alike, and which has already forced parallel emergency measures in Pakistan's petrol market.

The import arithmetic sharpens the argument. Of roughly 1.3 million tonnes of LPG consumed in Pakistan, only about 225,000 tonnes are imported from the Gulf, mainly by the private sector, according to Ali Haider. The rest of the import requirement has historically come overland, above all from Iran. When that route closes, the Gulf-import channel cannot expand fast enough to fill the gap — and Haider's sharpest charge is that the state-owned channel has not filled it either. He says the ProGas terminal at Port Qasim, which is under the control of Sui Southern Gas Company, last imported LPG about seven months ago. That single fact, if accurate, is the marketers' case in miniature: the state infrastructure exists, but it is not importing, while the private importers who do import are being designed out of the new policy.

A second charge concerns money already collected. The association says the 2016 LPG policy imposed a petroleum development levy of Rs4,669 per tonne on locally produced LPG, to fund subsidies for state-owned entities such as PSO, Parco and SSGC to import LPG in winter and during emergencies. Haider alleges that, despite billions of rupees collected through that levy, those entities have failed to import LPG during the current shortage. That is an allegation, not an audited finding, and this article reports it as the association's claim rather than as an established fact: no audit of the levy fund's collections or spending has been published in the reporting consulted. But the claim's logic is clear — if consumers and producers have already paid for emergency imports through the levy, the industry asks, where are those imports now that the emergency has arrived?

What the government has done so far

The government's visible response so far has been procedural rather than substantive: the prime minister has formed an eight-member ministerial committee to review the proposed reforms, led by the petroleum minister and including cabinet ministers, advisers and energy officials, with one month to submit a comprehensive report. The committee was ordered after protests from LPG marketing companies and dealers dissatisfied with the lack of industry consultation on the new framework. Its brief covers the full LPG framework — the proposed reforms themselves, cylinder standards, and the structure of the local LPG market.

What the government has not done, in the reporting consulted for this article, is respond directly to the strike announcement itself: no statement accepting, rejecting or negotiating the marketers' demands had appeared at the time of writing, and no petroleum ministry response to the association's letter was quoted in the coverage. That absence is stated here as a sourcing limit, not as a claim that the government is silent — a response may follow through the committee process, and this article will be updated if one appears. But the timing matters: a committee with a one-month mandate and a strike deadline fifteen days away are on different clocks, and the marketers' announcement can be read as an attempt to force the negotiation into the shorter of the two.

The November notification itself is also part of the government's response, in the sense that it keeps the existing system running while the reform is reviewed. By notifying a November price under the old OGRA system, the regulator has effectively kept the old benchmark alive for another month, even as the proposal to replace it is examined. That buys time, but it does not resolve the underlying gap: the notified Rs294 per kilogram and the open-market Rs630 per kilogram describe two different markets, and no notification bridges them while supply remains short.

What this is not: two recent LPG disputes it should not be confused with

Two other LPG stories from the past fortnight risk confusion with this one, and keeping them separate matters for readers trying to follow the dispute. The first is the Lahore distributors' strike of 24–25 October, when LPG retail outlets across the provincial capital shut for two days. That stoppage was called by distributors, not marketers, and its grievance was different: enforcement operations by the PERA Force, Civil Defence and local government against refilling and decanting, with shopkeepers complaining that equipment worth Rs50,000 per unit was being confiscated and heavy fines imposed while plant owners selling at high prices were untouched. It ended after two days. The 16 November announcement is nationwide, comes from the marketers' association, and concerns the pricing formula and draft policy — a different actor, a different grievance, and a different scale.

The second is the LPG pricing formula change itself, which TaazaPulse covered on 30 October: from 1 November, PSO's landed import cost replaces the Saudi Aramco cap as the benchmark for local producers. That change is the background to the strike, not the strike itself. The strike announcement adds a new fact — a dated nationwide stoppage threat with stated demands — on top of ground already reported. Readers who want the formula's mechanics, the 20–25 percent retail estimates and the notified-versus-market history should read that earlier report alongside this one; this article does not repeat its analysis, and it does not treat the formula change as though it were the strike.

What happens between now and 16 November

Four things will decide whether the strike happens, and in what form. The first is the ministerial committee: whether it meets the marketers, and whether its one-month review produces an interim understanding before 16 November, or whether the deadline arrives with the review still under way. The second is supply itself: whether the Iran border position changes, whether Gulf imports through Port Qasim increase, and whether the ProGas terminal resumes importing — any of which would ease the shortage that gives the strike its leverage. The third is the market price: whether open-market rates stay near Rs630 per kilogram or fall back toward the official rate, which would change the political pressure on both sides. The fourth is the government's direct response to the association's letter: a negotiation, a concession on consultation, or a firm rejection would each point to a different 16 November.

Households, meanwhile, have a narrower and more practical question: should they stock up? This article does not advise hoarding, which would itself worsen a shortage, and it notes that a strike announced fifteen days in advance is precisely the kind of warning that gives both sides room to settle. What households can reasonably do is what the reporting supports: expect the official cylinder price of Rs3,470 to remain the benchmark on paper while paying whatever the local market charges in practice, keep cylinders filled through normal channels rather than panic buying, and watch for two signals — a government statement on the marketers' demands, and any movement in the open-market price — as the real indicators of whether 16 November will pass quietly or not.

For the government, the strike announcement reframes the LPG question. Until now the debate has been conducted in the language of formulas and benchmarks — import parity, contract prices, margins per tonne. The marketers have translated it into the language of availability: from a given date, in every city, the fuel may simply not be sold. That translation is the point of the announcement, and it is why the next fifteen days matter more than the last fifteen. A pricing formula can be debated for a month. A nationwide stoppage cannot be debated after it starts.

TaazaPulse will update this story if the government responds to the marketers' demands, if the ministerial committee announces an interim position before 16 November, if supply through Port Qasim or the Iran border changes materially, or if the association confirms, postpones or withdraws the strike. Until then, the verified position is this: the Pakistan LPG Marketers Association has announced a nationwide strike from 16 November over a proposed pricing formula and draft policy it says excludes the private sector; it has written to Petroleum Minister Ali Pervaiz Malik calling for complete deregulation; OGRA's November official price is Rs294,075 per tonne, or Rs3,470 for a standard 11.8-kilogram cylinder, while open-market prices reach up to Rs630 per kilogram; and the shortage behind those prices is attributed by both industry associations to the closure of the Iran border, from which at least seventy percent of Pakistan's LPG imports have come.

What is confirmed in this article is limited to what the reporting establishes: the Pakistan LPG Marketers Association's nationwide strike announcement from 16 November (Business Recorder, 31 October 2026; Dawn's LPG market reporting, 1 November 2026); Ali Haider's statements that sales would stop if demands are not accepted, that the draft policy sent to the prime minister contained no private-sector input, and that the association has written to Petroleum Minister Ali Pervaiz Malik calling for complete deregulation; OGRA's November notification (Rs294,075 per tonne, up from Rs279,341; 11.8-kilogram cylinder Rs3,470 from Rs3,296; Saudi Aramco contract price up 6.47 percent, average dollar rate down 0.12 percent, consumer price up Rs14.73 per kilogram; 45.4-kilogram commercial cylinder Rs13,351); open-market prices up to Rs630 per kilogram and company-franchise prices up to Rs400 per kilogram (Dawn via TechJuice, 1 November 2026); Irfan Khokhar's statements on the Iran border closure and the seventy-percent import share; the 1.3-million-tonne consumption figure, the 225,000-tonne Gulf import figure and the ProGas terminal claim (Ali Haider, as reported); the 2016 levy of Rs4,669 per tonne and the allegation that state entities failed to import despite billions collected (the association's allegation, not an audited finding); and the prime minister's eight-member ministerial committee with a one-month mandate (as reported from Dawn). The photographs are file photographs, not photographs of the association's announcement or of any Pakistani LPG facility. No direct government response to the strike announcement appeared in the reports consulted, and none is claimed. The strike has not yet taken place; 16 November is the announced date, conditional on the demands not being met.