India’s LPG crunch won’t ease anytime soon: We need a full-spectrum policy response

Other impacts have been in evidence too. A large proportion of the urban poor who live in slums and informal rental housing fail to qualify for LPG supply from oil marketing companies, leave alone subsidized connections under the Centre’s Ujjwala Scheme; they mostly buy their LPG in 5kg cylinders filled with gas meant for commercial use and have been the worst affected by the current shortfall.

Migrant workers employed by eateries starved of LPG have found themselves out of work. Like other migrant workers, many have struggled to keep kitchen stoves running. Faced with livelihood losses and unaffordable means of cooking food, many are headed back home from their cities of employment.

The LPG dislocation has been so sharp, it could take weeks to recover from it even after supplies normalize—for which the war must end and the Gulf’s hydrocarbon facilities repaired. India is staring at an LPG scarcity that could stretch from the short to medium term.

One way out is for LPG production at domestic refineries to rise. This can be achieved through tweaks of the usual refining process and the use of catalysts. Of course, refiners would have to forgo some of their high-value petrol output in favour of LPG. There are limits to how far a refinery’s output mix can be altered, but the use of lighter crude can also help increase its LPG yield.

Yet, such a step-up can make up for only a fraction of our lost imports from the Gulf. India must shop around for LPG from other major producers such as the US, Canada and Russia, even if it means paying a higher price. The higher cost must be passed on to consumers for them to modify their consumption either by reducing gas use or making it more efficient; the poor, of course, would need help.

Thankfully, with minor tweaks, LPG stoves can be adapted for piped natural gas (PNG). So, homes in areas where piped gas is available should be shifted to PNG. Urban gas suppliers have reportedly been pushed into action. But this is a stopgap solution, since we also face a shortage of natural gas; the war has clamped most of our imports, which fulfil about half the country’s consumption. Over the medium term, thus, India must shift to cooking with electricity derived from domestic coal and renewable energy, as Mint has argued earlier.

This switch could start with homes that have reliable electricity and can afford the extra cost of induction stoves and the special utensils that are magnetized by such stoves to generate an electric current in their walls, resistance to which creates heat.

To foster electric cooking on a mass scale, we must strengthen grids at the national, state, zonal, divisional, sub-divisional and feeder levels to bear the higher load that induction stoves would call for. Many buildings would need to be rewired, too. Building codes should be amended to require circuitry that can sustain electric cooking.

This is the direction in which policy needs to turn. Stopgap measures are needed, but we must not labour under the illusion that our hydrocarbon supply chain will snap back to a sustainable normal.