Mumbai’s CNG Crisis Ends As Damaged Pipeline Repaired, Supply To Resume Soon

Mumbai’s transport breakdown due to the crippling CNG crisis has been resolved as the Mahanagar Gas Limited (MGL) on Tuesday said that the repair work on the damaged gas pipeline at Chembur has been completed.

Testing of the restored line is currently underway, and supply is expected to resume “in the next one hour or so,” according to senior MGL sources.

“Repairing work of the damaged pipeline for CNG supply in Mumbai is completed now at Chembur, and now the repaired pipeline is being tested. Once the testing is complete supply will be resumed and services will start to come to normalcy. Supply is expected to be restored in next one hour or so,” MGL sources said.

The development came after Mumbai and its surrounding regions witnessed widespread

disruptions due to major supply breakdown that brought the metropolis’s CNG network to a near standstill. Long queues formed at pumps, and thousands of autorickshaws, taxis, and app-based cabs struggled to operate amid one of the worst CNG outages in recent years.

When The Crisis Unfolded?

The disruption began on Sunday afternoon after third-party damage to a GAIL India Ltd pipeline inside the Rashtriya Chemicals and Fertilisers (RCF) compound in Chembur. The rupture choked gas flow to MGL’s City Gate Station (CGS) at Wadala, the primary entry point for distributing CNG across Mumbai, Thane and Navi Mumbai.

With the Wadala entry station starved of supply, several pumps were forced to shut down or operate at extremely low pressure.

A large proportion of Mumbai’s autorickshaws and taxis, including vehicles operated by aggregators such as Ola and Uber, depend entirely on CNG supplied by Mahanagar Gas Limited (MGL). The fuel shortage has therefore caused significant disruption to daily commuting, particularly during peak hours.

The Mumbai Metropolitan Region has nearly 398 CNG stations, including 152 within Mumbai city limits. Petrol dealers reported that pumps receiving insufficient pressure either slowed dispensing or temporarily shut operations. In Thane and Navi Mumbai, where only a handful of pumps remained open, queues stretched for hours, with several motorists leaving without getting fuel.

Some app-based taxis switched to petrol as a backup. But most black-and-yellow taxis, which had removed their petrol systems to cut maintenance costs, had no alternative and were forced to stop operations

School transportation was particularly hit. Anil Garg, leader of a school bus operators’ body, told PTI, “Many school buses in the Mumbai Metropolitan Region are facing problems in getting CNG.”

MGL had said that residential consumers are being prioritised to ensure uninterrupted piped natural gas (PNG) supply to households. Industrial and commercial consumers were advised to switch to alternative fuels until the pipeline is restored.