In today’s FirstScroll, we explain India’s LPG crisis. Why 33 crore households are scrambling for cooking gas, why dairies warn of a milk shortage in 10 days, and how a war 5,000 km away just reached your kitchen.
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The Story
In Mumbai, residents are taking leave from work to stand in line for hours. In Bengaluru, restaurants are shutting kitchens. In Kolkata, autorickshaws are off the roads. In Delhi, black-market LPG cylinders are selling for ₹5,000, over five times the official price. And in JNU, the student union is marching because the campus mess can’t cook enough food.
India is in the grip of its worst LPG shortage in decades. And it’s not because we’re running out of gas globally. It’s because the one route through which 90% of our imported cooking gas travels just shut down.
The Numbers That Explain Everything
India consumes roughly 31.3 million metric tonnes of LPG annually. Our refineries produce about 13 million tonnes domestically, roughly 40% of what we need. The remaining 60% is imported. And 91% of those imports come from three countries: Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the UAE.
All three ship through the Strait of Hormuz.
When the Iran war effectively closed the strait on February 28, India’s LPG supply chain didn’t slow down. It collapsed. In January 2026 alone, India produced 1.158 million tonnes of LPG but needed 2.192 million tonnes in imports. When that import tap got turned off, the gap became a crisis within days.
India’s total LPG storage capacity is about 1.9 million tonnes, equivalent to just 22 days of supply. The underground caverns at Visakhapatnam and Mangaluru hold barely 1.4 lakh tonnes, less than five days of national consumption. For comparison, countries with serious energy security frameworks maintain 30 to 90 days of reserves.
India chose ten.
From Strait to Stove: How It Hit Home
On March 4, QatarEnergy declared Force Majeure on several LPG shipments bound for India. Insurance premiums for tankers navigating the Gulf surged by over 500%. Saudi Aramco’s Juaymah facility shutdown in late February wiped out an estimated 400,000 tonnes of LPG shipments scheduled for Indian ports this month.
By March 8, the government had invoked the Essential Commodities Act. A control order on March 8 directed all refineries to maximise LPG yields and channel their entire output of propane and butane streams exclusively to the three oil marketing companies for cooking gas. Within five days, domestic LPG production was up 28%.
But 28% more of 40% of demand still doesn’t cover the missing 60%.
On March 9, the minimum gap between domestic cylinder refill bookings was increased from 21 days to 25 days. In rural areas, waits have reportedly stretched to 45 days. Delivery timelines that were normally 2.5 days have ballooned to 15 to 25 days in affected areas.
The Milk Connection
Here’s where it gets worse. India’s dairy industry, the largest in the world, runs on LPG. Pasteurisation, sterilisation, and packaging all require massive amounts of cooking gas. Dairy operators have warned that they have barely 10 days of packaging stock left. If LPG supply to commercial and industrial users isn’t restored soon, India could face a milk shortage on top of the cooking gas shortage.
Think about that chain reaction for a second. A war in Iran shuts a strait in the Gulf, which cuts off gas shipments to India, which threatens the pasteurisation process in dairies, which could mean your kids don’t get milk. Globalisation doesn’t just connect markets. It connects your kitchen to a conflict zone.
The Chaos on the Ground
Tamil Nadu reported 10,000 restaurants facing closure. Bengaluru’s Hotels Association announced shutdowns. In Delhi, commercial LPG hit ₹5,000 on the black market, more than four times the official rate. Induction cooktops sold out online. Families in smaller cities reverted to firewood. Darjeeling’s tea industry warned that the first flush harvest, its premium product, could be disrupted because processing requires fuel.
Chhattisgarh seized 741 cylinders from 102 locations in a crackdown on hoarding. The government restricted commercial gas supply to 80% of the six-month average, while the environment ministry temporarily allowed restaurants to use biomass, coal, and kerosene as alternatives for one month.
Read that again. In 2026, India is officially asking restaurants to burn coal because it can’t get enough cooking gas.
Relief Ships: Shivalik and Nanda Devi
The first sign of physical relief came yesterday. Two Indian-flagged LPG tankers, Shivalik and Nanda Devi, carrying a combined 92,700 metric tonnes of cooking gas, successfully crossed the Strait of Hormuz with naval escorts and arrived at Mundra and Vadinar ports in Gujarat.
Reports also suggest that Iran has approved safe passage for Indian LPG tankers through the strait, a significant diplomatic development. But 92,700 tonnes is roughly three to four days of national consumption. It buys time. It doesn’t solve the problem.
The Structural Failure
The Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana (PMUY) is one of India’s most celebrated welfare programmes. It brought clean cooking fuel to 33 crore households. But as one analysis noted, it "created a massive new import dependency without building the storage, diversification, or distribution resilience to sustain it safely."
India built demand brilliantly. It forgot to build the supply chain to match.
The government is now diversifying: a 2.2 million tonne annual LPG deal with the US, procurement from Norway, Canada, and Russia, fast-tracked expansion of underground storage, and accelerated piped natural gas (PNG) rollout. All of these are the right moves. All of them should have happened five years ago.
The Bottom Line
Petroleum Minister Hardeep Singh Puri told Parliament that the "kitchens of India’s 33+ crore families, especially the poor and underprivileged, do not face any shortage." The standard delivery time, he said, remains 2.5 days.
That may be technically true for domestic cylinders in urban areas. But the queues in Mumbai, the shuttered kitchens in Bengaluru, the ₹5,000 black-market cylinders in Delhi, and the 45-day wait in rural India tell a different story.
The crisis is expected to ease by the first week of April if the Hormuz situation stabilises. But "if" is doing a lot of work in that sentence. And the deeper lesson remains: India powers 33 crore kitchens with a fuel it can’t produce enough of, shipped through a strait it can’t control, with reserves that last three weeks.
That’s not energy security. That’s energy hope. And hope, as your empty gas cylinder will tell you, is not a strategy.
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If this story helped you understand why your cylinder is late, share it with someone who’s been standing in line.
Sources: PIB, Business Standard, Dainik Jagran, India.com, TalesXP, TMV, Legal Service India, GK Now
