MUMBAI: India’s cooking gas problem is not about West Asia. It never really was. The disruption to LPG supplies triggered by regional tensions has done what crises usually do: strip away the comfortable assumptions and reveal the fault lines that were always there.
The country’s rapid expansion of LPG access over the past decade was a genuine achievement, bringing cleaner cooking fuel to tens of millions of households. But the supply infrastructure that underpins it never kept pace. Buffer storage is thin. Import terminals are bunched along the west coast. Alternative fuels remain underdeveloped. When the supply chain shudders, there is almost no cushion to absorb the shock.
The structural gaps are stark. India has no meaningful strategic LPG reserve to draw on during disruptions. Its distribution network is geographically lopsided, concentrated in the west, leaving the rest of the country exposed. East coast import and storage capacity remains inadequate. Inland reserves are sparse. Rail-based fuel depots, which could serve as distributed buffers, sit largely idle.
Experts argue that the answer lies not in patching the existing system but in redesigning it. Davinder Sandhu, co-founder and chairman of Primus Partners, said the disruption was “a signal to strengthen the structural resilience of our energy system.” The focus, he argued, must shift toward integrated energy systems combining domestic biogas production, robust natural gas infrastructure and storage-backed renewable energy, reducing the country’s dependence on imported fuel.
India generates enormous volumes of agricultural and municipal waste, making biogas a credible and largely untapped alternative to LPG. Scaling it up would simultaneously reduce import dependence and give millions of households a locally produced, reliable fuel source. At the same time, integrating long-duration energy storage with renewable energy systems could enable round-the-clock power supply, reducing the overall burden on the fuel distribution network.
Subhash Kumar, former chairman and managing director of ONGC, called for deeper investment in buffer storage, expanded connectivity and homegrown energy solutions. “India’s long-term pathway lies in a balanced, multi-source energy strategy that reduces vulnerability to external disruptions,” he said, adding that the country’s energy transition must remain “stable, flexible and secure.”
Parallel investment in gas pipelines and last-mile connectivity would help nudge households and businesses toward piped natural gas, adding yet another layer of resilience to a system that currently has too few.
India’s energy ambitions are large. Its infrastructure, for now, is not. Closing that gap is no longer a question of long-term planning. The crisis in West Asia just made it urgent.