You wake up, you tinker on your phone, you get ready, and put on a kettle for some coffee before work.
But wait!
You realise it’s early 2026 and there’s a shortage of cooking gas in Kolkata and India, due to a situation thousands of miles away in West Asia.
As the US-Israel vs Iran war escalates, India is stressed, concerned about its sharply depleting stock of natural gas and fuel. This has directly impacted both domestic households and commercial operations as they grapple with the supply chain crisis. The government has said there is no reason to panic, but the crunch is real.
This raises an obvious question: how does the closure of one single strait and trade route affect countries, like India, and cities, like Kolkata, on the other side of the continent?
The answer is mired in geopolitics, and the logistics of the LPG and LNG supply chain.
Situated between Oman and Iran, the Strait of Hormuz is considered the only gateway from the Persian Gulf for suppliers like Qatar, on whom India relies heavily for LNG, from which LPG is made.
Almost 50 per cent of India's oil and gas supply transportation is routed through this strait.
The ongoing conflict has halted not just LNG, but also propane and butane, which are essential components of LPG. So, Iran’s clampdown of the Strait of Hormuz is directly impacting whether you are cooking khichdi or biryani at home.
On the logistics front, LNG and LPG are both gaseous fuels that are transported and stored in liquid form, but they differ fundamentally in composition and origin. Transporting natural gas in its natural form is challenging, because it occupies an immense volume at atmospheric pressure, making it impossible to transport using tankers.
Therefore, natural gas is compressed and liquefied by cooling it to -162°C (-260°F) and then transported. It is then shipped to depots (storage terminals) where they are bottled in cylinders and supplied to commercial and domestic users.
India’s imports are estimated to be between 27 and 30 million metric tonnes, making it the fourth largest LNG importer. Among the key suppliers, Qatar ranks first, supplying 40 to 50 per cent of India’s total imports, followed closely by the USA and UAE.
While the primary cooking gas used in India is LPG, piped natural gas (PNG), too, is used, mostly in the metro cities. More than 33 million domestic households rely on LPG, and an approximate 15 million use PNG. This disparity is mainly because LPG is available nationwide and is portable, while PNG is hard to access, especially in rural areas due to a lack of infrastructure as underground steel and medium-density polyethylene pipelines are used for gas supply.
The Indian Oil Corporation (under the brand name Indane) supplies almost 50 lakh households with LPG cylinders in Kolkata, South and North 24 Parganas. The other two major suppliers are Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd (under the brand name Bharat Gas) and Hindustan Petroleum Corporation Limited (under the brand name HP Gas). Meanwhile, the Bengal Gas Company Limited is the primary supplier of PNG in Kolkata.
But why only a shortage of LPG?
The answer lies in the refinery configurations. From each barrel, only a fixed yield of products can be extracted, and this cannot be easily altered. With imports reaching an all-time low, rapidly increasing LPG production is difficult without changing refinery configurations, which again requires extensive infrastructure, capital and time.
So, the next time you get to turn on your gas, remember you are the end point of a long and complicated production operation.