LPG Supply Shock Exposes Fragility Of India’s Clean Cooking Strategy

India’s reliance on imported LPG has come under strain, as supply disruptions cause delays and uncertainty.
The disruption has caused a temporary return to firewood, particularly among low income households, hostels, and eateries.
Analysts say the disruption offers a critical moment to rethink India’s cooking energy mix and invest in more reliable, decentralised alternatives.

In the streets of Bhalaswa, a neighbourhood in north-west Delhi, Rama is known as “cylinder wali madam”. For years, she has facilitated LPG connections for low-income residents, persuading them to put away their wood and coal-fired stoves and helping them secure subsidies under the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana (PMUY), a government scheme to promote the use of LPG. For the last two weeks, however, she’s had to watch her efforts come undone as delays hit LPG supplies, triggered by the Israel-Iran conflict thousands of kilometres away.

Since the U.S. and Israeli forces struck Iran, choking India’s LPG supply, firewood has replaced gas connections in certain restaurants, hostels, and households

“The irony is, despite my nickname, I am struggling to secure an LPG cylinder myself,” Rama, a social worker, told Mongabay-India. To manage existing stocks, the government introduced a 25-day booking gap for cylinders in urban areas and 45 days in rural ones. A panicked surge in demand for cylinders has delayed disbursements to households, particularly in Delhi, Goa, Kerala, Uttar Pradesh, and Madhya Pradesh, where 15,000 cylinders were seized after being stockpiled.

In the weeks since US and Israeli forces struck Iran, choking India’s LPG supply, firewood has replaced gas connections in certain restaurants, hostels, and households. Nearly 60% of India’s domestic LPG consumption is imported, 90% of which comes from the Middle East region.

Chandni, a 32-year-old mother of four from Bhalaswa, and a recipient of the PMUY subsidy, enjoyed an uninterrupted gas supply for a year and a half till a month ago. When her refill never came, she returned to a fuel source that proved — in her opinion — more steady and reliable than LPG: firewood. “I’m tired of running from here to there for gas. To what lengths should I go to get my cylinder refilled when I have four children to take care of?” she asked.

The prices of firewood have doubled in Delhi, costing ₹20 a kilo compared to ₹10 before, she said. “Before using LPG, we would stock 30-40 kg of firewood for the week. Since this shortage began, we neither have gas, nor enough firewood. Cylinders are selling for double the price in the black market. Each source of fuel has become more expensive, and we’re scrambling to buy enough wood to get by,” Chandni said.

Bottlenecks in LPG supply

The reach and scale of India’s domestic LPG network is what makes the current scenario challenging. India has around 332 million active domestic LPG connections, of which 104 million are under the PMUY scheme. Most connections are in urban areas, where the impacts of the ongoing crisis are being felt disproportionately.

The Strait of Hormuz, a narrow throughway between Iran (north) and Oman and the United Arab Emirates (south). Two tankers carrying 92,712 million tonnes of LPG successfully docked in India after crossing the strait recently

On March 17, the government put out a statement saying no dry-outs had been reported in LPG distributorships in the country. Two tankers carrying 92,712 million tonnes of LPG — one day’s supply — successfully docked in India after crossing the Strait of Hormuz, but 22 other vessels continue to be stranded in the Persian Gulf.

Even though India has ramped up its LPG production by 38%, the output of this effort is unlikely to bridge the gap. “The yield of LPG from crude processing is relatively low, typically around 1-4% of crude processed. This means that refineries cannot simply increase LPG output without also increasing production of petrol and diesel. And while India is a net exporter of petroleum products overall, refineries are optimised for a fixed product mix, so processing more crude does not allow India to selectively produce more LPG,” explained Sunil Mani, Policy Advisor at IISD.

Commercial establishments are absorbing the initial shock of the supply crunch. But among urban households, it’s PMUY beneficiaries like Chandni that are most vulnerable to falling through the cracks. Even within Delhi, it’s in the lower-income neighbourhoods like Paharganj where stocks of firewood are flying off the shelves. “In the eight years I’ve worked in this shop, I’ve never seen such a sudden demand for firewood,” said Subhash, a worker at the Giridhar Mal Tara Chand, a small firewood supplier.

In the upscale Lodhi colony, sales haven’t surged as Neelam Maini, a firewood shopkeeper, had hoped. “People must be using electric stoves to get by,” she said.