India lost 6.2 million LPG customers from April to August after the Iran war cut Gulf shipments that previously supplied 90% of the country’s imports— a contraction not seen in over a decade.
Oil Ministry data shows domestic LPG connections fell from 333.9 million at the start of the fiscal year to 327.7 million by September, while the Ujjwala scheme’s beneficiaries dropped 0.6 million to 105.7 million.
The shift to piped natural gas is already underway: city gas distributors added 0.6 million new PNG customers and billed 10.7 million households, accounting for roughly one‑sixth of the LPG loss.
Regional losses were uneven. Southern India saw a 2.63 million drop, Western 1.62 million, Northern 1.5 million and Eastern 0.34 million, leaving 99.3 million, 79.8 million, 68.3 million and 67.5 million customers respectively.
Consumption rose to 31.3 million tonnes in FY25, up from 29.7 million the year before, while domestic output held steady at 12.8 million tonnes, widening the import gap. With only 1.9 million tonnes of storage—about 22 days of supply—India’s storage capacity remains a bottleneck.
In response, oil marketing firms will stop issuing new LPG connections and will roll out Aadhaar‑based biometric checks to flag inactive accounts, a move that dovetails with the government’s push for natural gas adoption.