The LPG Crisis: 4 Ways It Could End — And All 4 Are Complicated

The world exhaled for a few hours on the morning of April 8 after a "ceasefire" was announced between the US and Iran after 39 days of war. And, Israel, a partner in Operation Epic Fury, was MIA. The ceasefire, which seems like a no-show after strikes at Iran’s oil refinery and in Lebanon, had social media filled with declarations of peace, and Strait Of Hormuz - the choke point. As per the declarations, ships began moving through the Strait of Hormuz for the first time freely in over a month. Trump posted on Truth Social that Iran had agreed to a "COMPLETE, IMMEDIATE, and SAFE OPENING of the Strait of Hormuz." US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth declared at a Pentagon briefing, “The strait is open.” Markets jumped. Shipping desks scrambled to reroute.Then

Israel struck Lebanon. And within hours, the strait shut again.

Iran’s Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi posted that the ceasefire terms were explicit: "The US must choose — ceasefire or continued war via Israel. It cannot have both.” Bloomberg’s ship-tracking data confirmed just three vessels left the region on Wednesday. In normal times, roughly 135 ships cross daily. More than 800 freighters remain stuck inside the Gulf, most waiting to leave. The brief window of hope — and its collapse within the same news cycle — is precisely what makes the LPG crisis so dangerous. This is not a temporary inconvenience. It is a structural supply emergency with no clean exit.

How Bad Is India’s LPG Crisis?

Data from India’s Petroleum Planning and Analysis Cell shows that in January 2026, India produced 1.158 million tonnes of LPG, while imports stood at 2.192 million tonnes — nearly double. Over 90 per cent of roughly 20.5 million metric tonnes of LPG imports in 2024 came from West Asian suppliers, with most shipments routed through the Strait of Hormuz. March imports crashed to 1.19 million tonnes — a 46 per cent decline. The government slashed commercial LPG allocations by up to 80 per cent, forcing thousands of restaurants and hotels across Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru and Kochi to shut or switch to firewood and coal. Authorities invoked the Essential Commodities Act, conducting over 12,000 raids and seizing more than 15,000 cylinders to combat hoarding.

War-risk insurance premiums, according to Reuters, for tankers surged — in some cases by more than 1,000 per cent — prompting insurers to cancel cover for ships entirely.For 33 crore Indian households, most of them brought onto clean cooking fuel under the Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana, this is not an abstract geopolitical problem. It is a cylinder that does not arrive.Now here are the four ways this ends. None of them are easy.

Way 1: The Ceasefire Holds and Hormuz Fully ReopensThis is the scenario the world is hoping for. The first round of formal negotiations is set for Saturday in Islamabad, led by Vice President JD Vance, Special Envoy Steve Witkoff, and Jared Kushner. But the IMO has already flagged the problem with optimism: the resumption of routine trade "will depend on the maritime security situation", International Maritime Organisation’s Damien Chevallier said, noting that ship operators "will need to carefully assess the risk situation" even if the corridor is declared open. Even if the talks hold, India will not see relief immediately. India’s primary alternative supplier, the United States, is 5 to 6 weeks away by sea. A reopened strait does not mean a full cylinder at the door next week. The queue of over 800 stranded vessels, the reset of war-risk insurance classifications, and the backlog of cargo scheduling all take time to clear. And the Lebanon variable remains live. Vance himself described the ceasefire as a "fragile truce" and warned that if Iran does not follow through on reopening Hormuz, the ceasefire will end. It really didn’t begin as such!One strike, one miscalculation, and the window closes again — as it already has once.Way 2: Pipeline Bypasses Scale UpSaudi Arabia and the UAE have infrastructure that sidesteps Hormuz entirely. Saudi Arabia’s East-West pipeline, or Petroline, and the UAE’s Abu Dhabi Crude Oil Pipeline to Fujairah have been thrust into the spotlight as partial alternatives to the blocked strait. Saudi Aramco CEO Amin Nasser has been targeting 7 million barrels per day capacity on the East-West pipeline within weeks, while the UAE’s ADCOP is currently flowing at approximately 1.8 million barrels per day. But there is a hard ceiling here. The IEA estimates available bypass pipeline capacity at 3.5 to 5.5 million barrels per day — leaving a net shortage of 14.5 to 16.5 million barrels per day if Hormuz stays blocked. And critically, these pipelines carry crude oil — not LPG. LPG remains bottled up inside the Gulf along with LNG, sulphur, helium, and petrochemicals — none of which can move through a crude oil pipeline. Infrastructure that moves barrels to Fujairah or Yanbu ports does nothing for the cylinder problem facing hundreds of millions of households.Way 3: Alternative Suppliers Fill the GapIndia has been sprinting to diversify. A long-term LPG supply agreement with the US, securing around 2 to 2.2 million tonnes annually, was already in place before the crisis. India is now also securing LPG cargoes from Russia and Japan. And in a significant diplomatic pivot, India has resumed buying oil and gas from Iran – its first purchases since 2019 – after a US Treasury sanctions waiver allowing countries to purchase petroleum products from Tehran. India’s Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas confirmed that Indian refiners had secured crude supplies from more than 40 countries, including Iran, and that a vessel carrying Iranian LPG had reached Indian shores. The arithmetic, however, is brutal. India consumes roughly 2.6 million tonnes of LPG per month — around 80,000 to 90,000 tonnes per day. Alternative cargoes typically run 40,000 to 60,000 tonnes each. Replacing Gulf volumes is not a procurement problem solved with a few contracts. It is a volume and logistics problem of a different magnitude. Replacing Middle Eastern LPG at short notice is proving extraordinarily difficult, constrained by infrastructure limits, incompatible fuel mixes, and sharply higher prices elsewhere in the market. US LPG takes 5 to 6 weeks by sea. That time is critical.Way 4: A Structural Domestic Shift — PNG, Electric Cooking, RenewablesThe crisis has accelerated a conversation India should have had years ago. The government has invoked the Essential Commodities Act, 1955 to regulate LPG supply and prioritise residential use, while natural gas has been allocated first to residential piped networks and CNG for transport, followed by fertiliser production, industry, and refineries. The push toward Piped Natural Gas is real, and so is the consumer signal: induction stove sales have already surged amid fears of shortage, showing how quickly households respond when reliability is threatened. India has 143.60 GW of cumulative solar capacity and 195 compressed biogas plants being set up across the country. But scale is the problem. India has around 332.1 million active domestic LPG connections and 104.29 million PMUY connections. Switching hundreds of millions of households to piped gas or electric cooking is a multi-year infrastructure programme, not a crisis-response instrument. A structural fix is the right long-term answer - and the hardest short-term solution.

India's LPG Lifeline: The Vessels That Made It Through

Eight Indian-flagged vessels have successfully crossed the war-hit Strait of Hormuz since the conflict began on February 28. The first were MT Shivalik and MT Nanda Devi, carrying 92,712 tonnes of LPG, docking at Mundra and Kandla on March 16-17. Pine Gas and Jag Vasant followed with 92,612 tonnes, reaching Indian ports by March 28. BW TYR and BW ELM brought a combined 94,000 tonnes, docking at Mumbai and New Mangalore by April 1. Most recently, Green Asha, carrying 15,000 tonnes of LPG, reached India. Green Sanvi — carrying 46,650 tonnes with 25 seafarers aboard — has also completed the crossing.

Iran-flagged Sea Bird, carrying 44,000 tonnes of Iranian LPG, berthed at Mangalore on April 2 under a US sanctions waiver. Jag Vikram, along with several other Indian tankers, remains in the western strait. The war is not over. Neither is the wait.The War Behind The CrisisOperation Epic Fury began February 28, 2026, with nearly 900 US-Israeli strikes in 12 hours killing Supreme Leader Khamenei. Iran retaliated across the Gulf — hitting Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, UAE. Six weeks in, the war's most consequential casualty isn't military. It's the Strait of Hormuz — and every cylinder that hasn't arrived since.