India Cooking Gas Shortage 2026: How the Hormuz Blockade Left 310 Million Kitchens Short

India imports 60% of its cooking gas. Ninety percent of those imports pass through the Strait of Hormuz. Three weeks into Iran's blockade, two tankers have made it through. Two.

That's the arithmetic behind the queues stretching outside gas distributor offices in Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, and Chennai. Behind the 54-year-old food vendor in Old Delhi who's gone back to cooking on coal. Behind the mother who's been visiting the same distributor for four days running, her six-month-old in her lap, told each time to come back tomorrow.

310 million connections, one chokepoint

India's cooking gas story is, on paper, a triumph. The Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana scheme, launched in 2016, gave free LPG connections to low-income households. The programme expanded access from a small urban convenience to a national system — 310 million connections, reaching roughly 60% of all Indian households. Demand hit a record 2.8 million tonnes in February 2026 alone, a 10% jump from the year before.

But the demand curve outran production. India's domestic refineries cover only about 40% of the country's LPG needs. The rest — around 20 million tonnes a year — is imported. And the import pipeline runs through one of the narrowest shipping lanes on earth.

LPG is now India's single largest imported petroleum product. It accounts for 40% of all petroleum imports by volume and 53% by expenditure, according to India's Petroleum Planning and Analysis Cell. The country went from spending ₹1,274 crore on LPG imports in 1999 to ₹1.06 lakh crore in 2025 — an 83-fold increase in 27 years.

When Hormuz closed, that ₹1.06 lakh crore supply line went dark.

What the shortage looks like at street level

Maya Rani, 36, has been arriving each morning at a gas distributor's office in Delhi. She waits for hours with her six-month-old daughter. Four days running, she's gone home empty-handed. "We are eating just one meal a day from outside," she told The Guardian. "I've had to ask neighbours to help boil milk for my baby."

Mohammad Mustaqeem, 54, sells fried food in Old Delhi. He's stopped using gas entirely. "Now that there is no gas, I am cooking with coal," he told The Independent. "Instead of moving forward, we're moving back in time."

Across India, the crisis is unfolding in layers:

• Households face booking gaps of 25 days in cities, 45 days in rural areas. Digital booking systems have broken down, pushing people to queue in person from dawn.
• Restaurants and hotels are shutting. About a fifth of Mumbai's eateries have closed or scaled back. Food delivery platforms Swiggy and Zomato estimate a 5% revenue hit so far.
• Black markets have exploded. NDTV investigations found cylinders selling for ₹6,500 (normal price: ₹900-1,000). Commercial cylinders reach ₹4,000-8,000 in some states. Police in Bihar's Araria district seized 261 hoarded cylinders in a single raid.
• Protests are spreading. Delhi Congress workers staged mass demonstrations outside gas agencies on March 12. The DMK held protests in Tamil Nadu. Opposition parties in Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, West Bengal, and Kerala are using the crisis as ammunition.

The government's response: coal, kerosene, and diplomacy

New Delhi's crisis playbook has three parts.

First, stretch domestic supply. Refineries have been ordered to increase LPG production by 25%. Hospitals, schools, and households get priority. Commercial supply has been restored at roughly 50% of normal levels. Twenty-seven states and union territories have set up control rooms.

Second, bring back fuels India spent a decade phasing out. The government has approved additional kerosene allocations for states and increased coal supply for commercial cooking. The irony isn't subtle: a programme designed to move India away from coal and kerosene is now reversing course because the replacement fuel can't get through.

Third, diplomacy with Tehran. India has negotiated safe passage for Indian-flagged ships. The tankers Shivalik and Nanda Devi — carrying a combined 92,700 tonnes of LPG — crossed Hormuz with Iranian naval escort and docked at Gujarat ports on March 16-17. Iran framed the passage as a gesture toward "friendly" nations. India framed it as a diplomatic success.

It's a drop in a very large bucket. India's daily LPG consumption runs at about 100,000 tonnes. Two ships carrying 92,700 tonnes between them covered roughly one day's demand. Officials are negotiating passage for six more LPG carriers and two crude tankers stranded in the Gulf, carrying about 270,000 tonnes — another three days' worth.

The diversification scramble

India has turned to the US. The Times of India reports 176,000 tonnes of American LPG have been secured. But Gulf supplies take 7-8 days to reach Indian ports. US cargoes take 45 days. Russian and Japanese supplies take 35-40 days.

That's not a substitution. It's a trickle. And it costs more.

The deeper problem, as thinktank analyst Akhtar Malik of the Bureau of Research on Industry and Economic Fundamentals told The Guardian: "India built strategic crude reserves but did not create equivalent buffers for LPG." Most energy systems maintain 40-60 days of reserve cover for critical fuels. India has just over 20 days of LPG storage.

"The current stress is as much a planning gap as it is a supply disruption," Malik said.

The perception gap: wall-to-wall in Hindi, invisible in English

Here's the part most of the world doesn't see. The Albis Perception Gap Index scored this story 6 out of 10, but the real gap is in language, not geography.

In Hindi media — Times Now Navbharat, News18 Hindi, NDTV Hindi, Dainik Jagran — the LPG crisis has been the top domestic story for two weeks. Live blogs run 24 hours. Every state has a dedicated tracker. Black market busts, cylinder seizures, protest footage, queue photographs — the coverage is saturated.

In English-language international media, India's cooking gas crisis is a paragraph inside a Hormuz roundup. CNN ran one feature ("Iran's chokehold on Hormuz threatens India's beloved samosas and chai"). The Guardian published a strong reported piece. But for most English-speaking audiences, this is a footnote to an oil price story.

The same war is experienced as a geopolitical chess game in Washington and an empty gas cylinder in Mumbai. That framing gap has consequences. International policy conversations about Hormuz centre on oil prices, shipping insurance, and military options. The fact that 310 million Indian households can't reliably cook dinner doesn't make the briefing.

What happens next

Trump's 48-hour ultimatum to Iran expires Monday. If US strikes hit Iranian power plants, the IRGC has promised permanent Hormuz closure. If the strait stays shut for months rather than weeks, India's 20-day LPG buffer becomes a wall, not a bridge.

The government's fallback — kerosene, coal, piped natural gas expansion — can cushion the blow for some. But India's piped gas network covers only a fraction of the country. For the 310 million households on LPG, there isn't a clean alternative that arrives in time.

Mohammad Naseer, 45, sells fried food in Delhi. He's shut his business entirely. "I used to earn about ₹500 per day," he told The Independent. "The income has come down to zero."

A war 4,000 kilometres away reached his kitchen in less than a week. That's the distance between a chokepoint closing and a stove going cold.