India's cooking-gas disruption is not an alarm that we can snooze

India is currently facing its most severe cooking-gas disruption in decades, triggered not only by lags in domestic policy but by a major external shock.

The US-Israeli military action against Iran that began on February 28th effectively choked shipping through the Strait of Hormuz. With nearly 60% of India’s LPG demand met through imports and over 90% of those imports routed via this narrow waterway, the sudden shortfall in March imports fell roughly 40-46% month-on-month, thus producing long distributor queues, black-market prices (domestic 14.2 kg cylinders reportedly touching ₹4,000 or above in some areas), commercial supply cuts, and a consumer rush toward induction stoves.

How did the government react, and was it enough?

Sure, the government’s response was swift on the supply side. Refineries were ordered to maximise LPG yields. The domestic output rose 25-50% to around 50,000 tonnes daily, and imports were diversified via the US, Russia, and Australia. The households were prioritised over commercial and industrial users, and booking gaps were introduced to curb hoarding.

Meanwhile, the officials also insisted that there was 'no shortage' for domestic users, citing adequate buffer stocks and unchanged 2.5-day delivery cycles.

Yet the optics, such as panic booking, shutdown threats from restaurants, and a visible surge in the demand for alternative fuel, tell a different story. The crisis was not merely logistical. It was structural.

Was the government unprepared?

To a significant degree, yes. India’s LPG consumption doubled over the past decade, largely because of the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana’s successful rural penetration, which brought clean fuel to over 100 million low-income households. But this success also bred dependence.

The subsidies that kept consumer prices artificially low have encouraged overconsumption without corresponding investment in resilience. Reliance on imports remained stubbornly high, and strategic reserves were thin. India had only a few days’ cover once the Hormuz route was blocked.

The geopolitical risks in the Gulf were hardly unforeseeable. India had lived through earlier Hormuz tensions, and yet the policy emphasis remained on expanding cylinder coverage rather than building resilience. Now, the domestic production is ramped up reactively, not proactively.

The government’s post-crisis narrative framed the event as an unavoidable 'COVID-like' external shock, but this does not explain the years of negligence. The real unpreparedness lay less in the inability to foresee war than in the failure to hedge against it.

The ever-persistent lag in piped natural gas (PNG)

India’s woeful under-development of piped natural gas (PNG) to ordinary households is under the spotlight for obvious reasons. Piped gas offers the stability, efficiency, and lower leakage that a major economy demands.

As of early 2026, the country had roughly 16.5 million domestic PNG connections, which is barely 5% of over 330 million active LPG connections. Even in 'high-penetration' urban pockets such as Delhi (around 29%) or parts of Maharashtra and Gujarat, coverage remains patchy and largely limited to middle-class apartments. Most rural and smaller-town India remains cylinder-dependent. Contrast this with several other major economies.

In the Netherlands, natural-gas penetration for household cooking and heating exceeds 90% in connected areas. The United States supplies piped natural gas to the majority of urban and suburban homes (often 60-80% nationally for residential heating and cooking, where infrastructure exists). Russia has extensive pipelines reaching far beyond cities. In the United Kingdom and Germany, gas networks historically served over 80% of households in the cities before recent decarbonisation shifts. Even now, its coverage dwarfs that of India’s.

China, despite its own challenges, has expanded urban PNG far more aggressively relative to population growth. Even in Japan, where the constant earthquake risk keeps LPG cylinders common, the urban city-gas networks are widespread where feasible.

India’s lag is not accidental. LPG cylinders offered an attractive 'quick-win' solution. Low upfront infrastructure cost, rapid rural rollout, and easy subsidy targeting sufficed political needs. PNG, by contrast, demands considerable expenditure on pipelines, last-mile connections, regulatory coordination across states, and safety compliance. These barriers are compounded by fragmented urban planning.

New PNG connections surged in March (over 3 lakh activated, another 2.7 lakh issued), and the government is now extending the national PNG drive. Long-term prevention measures for a potential crisis require more than crisis-driven momentum. A credible strategy could include an aggressive scale-up of PNG.

The government could see the city-gas distribution (CGD) networks as national infrastructure, not state-by-state projects. It could mandate PNG in all new housing, offer connection subsidies for existing LPG users, and integrate it with the 'One Nation One Gas Grid' vision. It could target tens of millions of domestic connections by 2030 through public-private execution with clear penalties for delays.

How to build resilience to overcome a crisis?

Promoting options such as biogas and electric induction could help reduce dependence on LPG/LNG, but not by a good deal. Diversifying supply chains and depending less on imports would help immensely. Accelerating domestic exploration (especially in the KG basin and offshore) and building strategic reserves equivalent to 60-90 days of consumption would at least give breathing space in a crisis.

The government has probably identified the war-related crisis as an opportunity to pivot. But whether it sustains the political will and commitment will determine if India finally moves from reactive firefighting to genuine energy security.