What happened

Gas and oil pipelines and installations in Balochistan, Pakistan, have been repeatedly bombed by Baloch separatist militant groups — principally the Baloch Liberation Army (BLA), the Baloch Republican Guards (BRG) and the Baloch Raaji Aajoi Sangar (BRAS) umbrella coalition — as part of a long-running insurgent campaign against what these groups describe as the exploitative extraction of the province's natural-gas resources, which are consumed mainly outside Balochistan. Data compiled by the South Asia Terrorism Portal covering March 2000 through October 2023 recorded 254 attacks on gas and oil installations and tankers in the region, causing 36 deaths and 39 injuries across the full period. Attack frequency peaked at more than 30 incidents annually during 2007-2009 and again in 2011, before declining sharply after 2014 — the tracked data shows only 2 attacks in each of 2016 and 2017 and zero recorded in 2021 — before ticking back up to at least 6 attacks in 2023 alone, including incidents that disrupted gas supplies to Karachi and surrounding areas that October. Balochistan's share of Pakistan's total gas production fell from about 56% in 1995 to roughly 23% by 2022, even as the province itself consumes only a small fraction (reported as under 6%) of national gas output, a disparity the militant groups cite as their rationale. This record represents the documented 2016-2023 continuation of this decades-long sabotage pattern as a chronic phenomenon; several individually significant pipeline-bombing incidents from 2024 (Bolan/Mach), 2025 (Lakki Marwat) and 2026 (Bolan/Gorkat) are recorded separately elsewhere in this dataset rather than folded into this pattern record.

When cited sources give different casualty, damage or spill figures for this event, they’re reported side by side above rather than merged into one number. See how confidence levels work.