India’s 13.1% drop in LPG use in April 2026 signals deeper stress in India’s clean cooking transition.
Despite a growing consumer base under PMUY, supply disruptions from the West Asia crisis, import dependence, and affordability pressures are curbing refills.
Urban fuel switching to induction and PNG contrasts with rural reversion to biomass, exposing structural vulnerabilities in LPG-centric policy.
India’s sharp decline in liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) consumption in April 2026 is emerging as more than a temporary statistical dip. Policy analysts and sectoral experts say the 13.1 per cent fall reflects a complex mix of supply disruptions linked to the West Asia crisis, changing urban cooking patterns, affordability stress in rural India and growing pressure on the country’s import-dependent clean cooking strategy.
Petroleum Planning and Analysis Cell (PPAC) data, released on May 20, showed total petroleum product consumption fell 4.6 per cent year-on-year in April 2026 to 19.3 million tonnes (mt), compared to 20.2 mt in April 2025. Among petroleum products, LPG registered one of the steepest declines, falling to 2.2 mt from 2.5 mt a year earlier. Consumption had already been slowing in recent months, declining from 3.0 mt in January 2026 to 2.8 mt in February and 2.3 mt in March. In comparison, LPG consumption was 2.8 mt in January 2025, 2.5 mt in February and 2.7 mt in March.
The slowdown comes despite India’s LPG consumer base continuing to expand. Active domestic LPG consumers rose to 33.3 crore (333 million) as of April 1, 2026, from 32.9 crore (329 million) in 2025, 19.8 crore (198 million) in 2017 and 14.8 crore (148 million) in 2015. Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana (PMUY) beneficiaries also rose to 10.5 crore (105 million) from 10.3 crore (103 million) last year and just 2 crore (20 million) in 2017.
Launched in 2016, PMUY is a flagship scheme that aims to make clean cooking fuel such as LPG available to the rural and deprived households which were otherwise using traditional cooking fuels such as firewood, coal, cow-dung cakes etc.
The contradiction between rising connections and falling consumption is raising concerns over whether India’s clean cooking transition is entering a new phase where affordability and supply reliability, rather than access, are becoming the principal constraints.
The April dip coincided with severe geopolitical disruptions in West Asia following the US-Israel war with Iran and prolonged instability around the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world’s most critical energy shipping routes. The disruptions affected global LPG trade, freight movement and shipping availability.
India’s around 60 per cent dependence on imported LPG leaves domestic consumption vulnerable to such global shocks. Domestic LPG production in April was 1.3 mt against consumption of 2.2 mt, underscoring the import gap.
Trade data already shows the strain. Direct private LPG imports declined 43.8 per cent year-on-year last month to 1.9 mt from 3.4 mt a year earlier, according to Directorate General of Commercial Intelligence and Statistics data. LPG sales by state-run companies also declined 12.7 per cent to 2.1 mt from 2.5 mt in April 2025.
According to Sunil Mani, a policy advisor for International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD)’s Energy program, the fall in consumption appears to be linked more to refill access and supply disruptions than to retail price shocks alone. “One reason for that could be because of the supply chain issues that we saw recently, which is why it became difficult for people to actually get LPG refills,” Mani told Down To Earth (DTE), noting that while global LPG prices rose 40-50 per cent during the recent crisis, domestic LPG prices increased by only around 6-7 per cent because of government intervention.
At the same time, he mentioned that structural changes in urban cooking patterns may also be contributing to softer LPG demand. Mani pointed to increasing adoption of induction cooking and expansion of piped natural gas (PNG) connections in cities. “A lot of households are also shifting to induction-based cooking. The government has also started promoting PNG,” he said.
However, Mani cautioned that rural India presents a very different picture. Unlike urban consumers, rural households facing energy stress often revert to freely available polluting fuels such as firewood, dung cakes and agricultural residue. According to Mani, rising household energy expenditure is increasingly shaping cooking fuel choices. Rural households now pay nearly the same LPG price as urban consumers despite significantly lower and slower-growing incomes.
“When energy expenditure goes beyond a certain threshold, households start switching back to fuels which are free and easily available,” he said. This trend is already reflected in National Family Health Survey and NSSO (National Sample Survey Office) data showing continued “fuel stacking”, where households use LPG alongside traditional biomass fuels instead of fully transitioning to clean cooking.
The concern is particularly serious because India has invested heavily in expanding LPG access under the PMUY. But while access has improved, refill affordability and sustained usage remain major challenges.
Anil K Sood, a professor at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Complex Choices (IASCC), said the April decline also reflects a broader phenomenon of “demand compression” caused by both rationing and affordability pressures. “Because we are effectively rationing, so the demand, and we don’t have supplies, therefore rationing was the only alternative. And this current decline in demand is rationing driven,” Sood told DTE.
He warned that the decline could deepen further if supply disruptions and inflation continue. “People have no choice but to reduce their consumption. And LPG is a discretionary fuel in a lot of households in India,” he said.
Urban consumers, however, have fewer fallback options because of housing and space limitations. “For them, there’s no choice. They’ll have to depend on LPG,” Sood said, referring to households living in flats and dense urban settlements.
The emerging divergence between rural and urban cooking responses is also reopening debate around alternative clean cooking fuels. Mani said electric cooking could emerge as a viable urban alternative. Research conducted by IISD found electric cooking currently costs at least 20 per cent less than LPG or PNG in many urban areas.
At current global prices, the government absorbs losses of around Rs 300-400 on every domestic LPG refill despite market pricing. A 14.2 kg domestic refill sold at around Rs 913 in Delhi currently costs the government nearly Rs 1,300-Rs 1,400 at prevailing import prices.
“Once you incentivise the switch towards electric cooking, what you essentially also do is you free up a lot of LPG subsidies,” Mani said. “Those savings could then be redirected towards poorer rural households that remain highly vulnerable to refill price shocks.”
Sood pointed to biogas and biomass briquettes as possible rural alternatives. But both experts warned that these options remain difficult to scale because of maintenance challenges, low energy density and weak servicing ecosystems.
“Diversification is one such strategy in which we can start addressing this problem holistically,” Mani said, arguing that India’s heavy reliance on imported LPG has created a structural vulnerability now exposed by the West Asia crisis.