The 2019 district gazetteer credits the fort of Mehmoodkot to Mehmood Khan Gujjar, minister to the last Ghazi Khan of Dera Ghazi Khan, who went on to govern Dera Ghazi Khan for thirty years under Ghulam Shah Kalhora; the Sikhs later held the fort until they were paid to give it up. Wikipedia instead dates the town to the 17th century — the sources disagree. In 1908 Mahmudkot was the railway junction, with a branch west to Ghazi Ghat opposite Dera Ghazi Khan.
Today it is the oil hub of the district. PARCO's Mid-Country Refinery, commissioned in 2000 at a cost of US$886 million, was built for 100,000 barrels a day; PARCO says it was upgraded to 120,000 in 2020. It ships fuel by rail gantry and through the Mehmoodkot–Faisalabad–Machike pipeline, and oil companies keep storage depots around it — the gazetteer counted 350 to 400 tankers arriving every day. Because of the refinery, Mahmud Kot station is category B, loading and unloading crude and refined oil trains daily. The Lal Pir power station is also at Mehmood Kot.
The 2010 flood reached Mehmood Kot too: the breach of the barrage's Left Marginal Bund inundated Kot Addu, Sinawan, Mehmoodkot, Gurmani, Qasba Gujrat and Ghazi Ghat, and washed away about 2.5 km of railway between Budh and Mehmood Kot. Mehmood Kot is not counted as a separate town in the census, so there is no official population figure for it.
