PNG surge eases LPG pressure
More than 4 lakh consumers have been connected to piped natural gas recently as Delhi and other areas push PNG to reduce dependence on LPG, a shift the government says is stabilising deliveries. Asianet Newsable and IANS both report roughly 4.05 lakh PNG connections have been gasified in the last weeks as authorities promote PNG substitution to ease supply stress (newsable.asianetnews.com) (ianslive.in).
India has been rushing households off cylinders and onto kitchen gas pipes, and the number moved in just a few weeks is unusually large: the government said on April 10 that about 4.05 lakh piped natural gas connections had already been gasified since March 2026. That push started after supply anxiety spread from the West Asia crisis, because liquefied petroleum gas arrives in cylinders and ships while piped natural gas reaches homes through city networks already laid under roads and neighborhoods. The timeline shows how fast the campaign accelerated: the government reported 3.1 lakh connections gasified by March 31, 3.42 lakh by April 3, 3.6 lakh by April 5, and 4.05 lakh by April 10. “Gasified” here means a house is not just approved on paper but actually receiving fuel through the line, which is why the government has been tracking that number separately from new registrations. On April 5 it said registrations had crossed 3.9 lakh even as 3.6 lakh connections were already live. The campaign has a name: National PNG Drive 2.0, launched by the Petroleum and Natural Gas Regulatory Board on January 1, 2026 and later extended from March 31 to June 30 to keep the pace going. This is not a tiny pilot. The regulator’s data portal says India already had almost 1.65 crore piped natural gas connections as of January 2026, so adding 4.05 lakh in a month is more like a sudden sprint on top of an existing national network. (eportal.pngrb.gov.in/) Delhi sits near the center of that network push because Indraprastha Gas, the main city gas distributor in the capital region, said in its 2024-25 annual report that it had more than 30 lakh domestic piped natural gas connections after adding 3.7 lakh in that year alone. The government’s calculation is simple: every household that cooks through a meter instead of ordering a refill is one less cylinder that has to be filled, trucked, and delivered during a supply scare. On March 31 it said India was still delivering more than 50 lakh domestic liquefied petroleum gas cylinders a day on average, so even a modest shift eases pressure on that chain. At the same time, officials tried to keep the cylinder system from seizing up for people who cannot switch, especially migrant workers and renters. They opened easier access to 5 kilogram free-trade liquefied petroleum gas cylinders without address proof and said sales had crossed 5.7 lakh by April 4. They also pushed cleaner delivery records to stop diversion: on April 5 the petroleum ministry said Delivery Authentication Code-based liquefied petroleum gas deliveries had risen from 53 percent in February 2026 to 90 percent the previous day. So the story is not that cylinders disappeared. The story is that India used an already-built city gas grid as a pressure valve, moving roughly 4 lakh homes onto live piped supply in a month while trying to keep cylinder deliveries normal for the much larger population still dependent on them.
