In a rather startling development, US President Donald Trump has gone off on what many are calling an unhinged tirade, unleashing a series of erratic statements through social media and official addresses. On July 30, he threw the global community off balance by suddenly announcing a 25% tariff on India, alongside a penalty for continuing to import Russian oil.

But that wasn’t all.

In a following post, Trump made an even more puzzling declaration: “Pakistan has oil reserves”. He added that “the USA is working on a deal to develop those oil resources, and maybe one day India will have to buy Pakistani oil.”

Trump’s post on Truth Social

The statements, coming in Trump’s signature brash tone, may sound more like a plot twist from a political satire than real-world diplomacy. Yet, they carry the weight of being public announcements from a sitting—or campaigning—American president. Trump has always projected himself as a self-anointed saviour of the world, a global ‘Peacemaker’. But the ground realities stand in stark contrast to his dramatic proclamations.

So let’s break it down, beginning with Trump’s latest fantasy—the supposed oil bonanza in Pakistan.

Is Pakistan Really Sitting on ‘Massive’ Oil Reserves? A Reality Check

The facts speak clearly. Pakistan’s proven crude reserves are estimated at around 540 million barrels, mainly located in onshore fields such as the Potwar Plateau and Lower Sindh. To put it into perspective, that figure is negligible when compared with Saudi Arabia’s 260 billion barrels or Iraq’s estimated 140 billion barrels. In global terms, Pakistan doesn’t even make it to the minor league of oil-rich nations.

While some seismic surveys in the offshore Indus Basin have stirred excitement, suggesting potential hydrocarbon deposits—possibly around 9 billion barrels of oil equivalent—these are not certified reserves. The area near the Murray Ridge might hold promise, but those ‘estimates’ are technically not ‘reserves’. There’s no commercial viability as of now. No company has proven these findings to be recoverable. No recoverability estimates have been done, no plans exist as of yet for ‘development’.

Report about the 2019 exploration off the coast of Karachi

In reality, Pakistan’s history of oil exploration has been more disappointment than discovery. The Kekra-1 offshore drilling project was hailed as a game-changer in 2019, only to yield zero results. Fast forward to June 2023, and Shell exited its Pakistan venture, selling off its stake to Saudi Aramco. Even more telling—a government auction of 18 oil and gas blocks in 2023 failed to attract a single bidder.

Clearly, investors and industry experts aren’t buying into the “oil dream” narrative.

The Explosive Issue of Balochistan and Why It Blocks Trump's Oil Fantasy

The next stumbling block in Trump’s ambitious “develop Pakistani oil” agenda? Balochistan—Pakistan’s largest yet most volatile province. The reality is grim.

Pakistan is a failed state. Economically, demographically, geopolitically and almost in every other parameter. It has an $126 billion external debt and $17.5 billion energy import bill limit. With such a fragile economy, Pakistan cannot possibly fund large-scale oil exploration or build the necessary infrastructure—pipelines, refineries, offshore rigs—on its own. Unless the United States literally foots the entire bill, there is zero possibility of this dream materializing.

Even China, with its grand China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), has not been able to make a dent in Pakistan’s downward spiral. Years and billions of dollars later, the corridor has barely delivered meaningful economic change.

And then comes the elephant in the room: Balochistan, which makes up 44% of Pakistan’s territory. The region has long resisted state control, and it’s not just unrest—it’s outright rebellion. Trump and his advisors should recall what happened in Afghanistan before fantasizing about offshore oil development near insurgent strongholds.

If Donald Trump, witnessing firsthand how the US fared in Afghanistan, thinks he will just swoop in and ‘develop’ oil wells in the offshore Indus basin and Baloch rebels will sit by and watch, he is either day dreaming, or taking his own citizens for a ride.

Trump’s Sudden Love for Pakistan and India’s Decisive BrahMos Strikes

While Trump woos Pakistan with oil pipe dreams, India had already struck a very different kind of pipeline—military targets—with clinical precision.

During Operation Sindoor, India launched surgical missile strikes that resembled a real-life ‘Call of Duty’ campaign. One key strike involved the Nur Khan airbase, located dangerously close to Pakistan’s Strategic Plans Division—essentially, the command center for its nuclear arsenal—and less than 10 km from the military headquarters in Rawalpindi. The BrahMos missile hit its mark.

Later reports sparked further controversy. The Nur Khan airbase was allegedly under US control, though the full details remain shrouded in diplomatic fog.

What India achieved was unprecedented. India’s precision strikes during Operation Sindoor were more than unprecedented; they not only rendered Pakistan’s ‘China-made’ air defence completely useless, and dug craters on their runways, they imposed heavy military damage and destroyed a significant chunk of Pakistan’s military assets, not limited to multiple fighter jets, the Saab 2000 AEW&C aircraft and the Erieye radar systems.

The BrahMos missiles not only tore through Pakistani defences—they shredded diplomatic silence. And Trump? His behavior went from erratic to downright manic.

Donald Trump was unhinged before, but something seems to have snapped in him after Operation Sindoor.

He began pushing out baseless claims of brokering peace and using trade as leverage—without offering any trade deal to back it up. His narrative implies that India somehow obeyed his command after blowing up critical Pakistani installations, which, unsurprisingly, nobody believes.

In fact, NDTV’s Vishnu Som joked whether the BrahMos missile that dug a crater in Rahim Yar Khan might have “struck oil.”

With Trump’s disturbed, bizarre rants that are rather unusual for a world leader, even when he is Donald Trump, Indian Twitter is now rife with speculations whether the rattled, berserk reactions are a result of India’s unexpected, spectacular strikes on Pakistan during the Operation Sindoor.

Final Thoughts: Trump’s Noisy Threats vs India’s Quiet Strength

Trump’s fiery declarations have become part of his brand. But in today’s world, where new powers are asserting themselves, such noise rarely delivers real results.

Trump has been making loud promises, boastful claims, ‘Trump-eting’ his imaginary glories and peddling grandiose visions of MAGA to a world that is very well aware of the new multipolarity, especially in the Global South.

India remains unmoved. India is new to neither threats, nor sanctions. It has seen far worse and has emerged as a rapidly growing, the world’s fourth biggest economy, while maneuvering a complex world.

Whether or not Pakistan has oil doesn’t matter much. Because even if BrahMos missiles didn’t actually strike oil, they certainly struck a nerve—with Pakistan, and perhaps even more so with Donald Trump, who now finds himself shouting into a storm of rising multipolar realities.

Haters may call it a joke, but maybe the Brahmos missiles indeed made craters so deep that Pakistanis and their new daddy Donald Trump have found oil.