After the completion of a five-year PPP government, an election was scheduled for 11 May 2013. Abbasi ran for a seat in the National Assembly as a candidate of the PML-N and successfully retained his seat from Constituency NA-50 (Rawalpindi) for the sixth time with 134,439 votes by defeating PPP candidate Ghulam Murtaza Satti. and was given the task of ending the Pakistan's electricity crisis. and instead advocated and pushed for the liquefied natural gas (LNG) powered electricity production saying that LNG was more cheaper and would save the government billion of dollars. In February 2016, Abbasi in his capacity as Minister for Petroleum signed US$16 billion agreement with Qatargas for purchasing 3.75 million metric tons of LNG annually for a period of 15 years, to generate 2,000 MW of electricity and to meet 20% gas requirements of Pakistan where demand for natural gas was 8,000 MMFCD against a supply of 4,000 MMFCD. The deal which made to overcome the country's swelling power crisis was referred to as Pakistan's biggest commercial transaction ever. After the LNG contract received criticism from the opposition parties over price issue and for being non-transparent, Abbasi defended the agreement with Qatar saying Pakistan has negotiated cheapest price with Qatar. He said the contract which took 14 months of negotiation with the government of Qatar was made under his supervision and he is responsible for it.