The escalating war in West Asia has sent ripple waves through India’s energy supply chain, pushing the nation to accelerate its transition toward a natural gas based cooking fuel, following supply disruptions caused by mounting tension between the United States, Israel and Iran.
Nearly 90% of India’s LPG imports are sourced from the West Asia region, leading to a significant shortage in the availability of cooking gas in the country. The policy makers are resorting to emergency measures to ease the burden on households and the disadvantaged population.
As a reaction to the supply shock, the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas (MoPNG) has scaled up its pipeline natural gas (PNG) rollout plans in semi-urban and urban areas of the nation.
According to information received from Joint Secretary, MoPNG, Sujata Sharma, as of 25 March 2026, 5,27,000 PNG connections had been fully gasified across the nation, while another 2,60,000 PNG connections have had their pipeline infrastructure put in place as an additional number, signalling that efforts to decrease the nation’s dependence on imported LPG were set to intensify. By 23 April of 2026, just under 42,000 households had surrendered their LPG connection opting for PNG.
The long-drawn move to shift from LPG-based cooking to PNG is being fuelled by supply constraints as well as the central government’s long term goal to ensure the country does not rely on foreign imports and increases its gas based energy mix share which has stood relatively low compared to global averages. With the outbreak of the war, these plans are likely to be pushed ahead further as the crisis seems to have turned into an urgent concern.
Meanwhile, state-run oil marketing companies (OMCs) have managed to bring commercial LPG allocation to roughly 70 per cent of its pre-war levels. Of this 70 per cent allocation, nearly 10 per cent is part of the reform-linked mechanism aimed at ensuring availability of fuel in critical sectors.
However, shortage continues to be an issue, and vulnerable populations such as migrant workers and lower income groups, who solely rely on LPG, have been severely impacted. In a bid to address the issue, OMCs are ensuring a steady supply of 5 kg FTLCylinders that are allocated to state governments for distribution to these affected segments, distributing over 17,83,000 cylinders to state governments for their distribution among needy segments across India, and over 81,000 among other sources of sales, in the last 23 days starting from 1st of April 2026.
