WHEN THE FLAME GOES OUT: HOW A MIDDLE EAST WAR IS STARVING INDIA OF ITS COOKING GAS
WHEN THE FLAME GOES OUT: HOW A MIDDLE EAST WAR IS STARVING INDIA OF ITS COOKING GAS
There is a peculiar, suffocating silence spreading across India's restaurant kitchens, railway pantry cars, and household stoves. It is the silence of unlit burners. A crisis born thousands of miles away in the blood-soaked waters of the Strait of Hormuz has now arrived at the doorstep of the ordinary Indian, threatening not just the evening meal but livelihoods, industries, and the economic foundation of a nation of 1.4 billion people.
India is running out of LPG. And the reason is war.
THE CHOKEPOINT THAT CHANGED EVERYTHING
The Strait of Hormuz, a narrow ribbon of water wedged between Iran and the Arabian Peninsula, is arguably the single most consequential stretch of ocean on the planet. Nearly one-fifth of the world's entire oil and gas supply passes through it each day. When the United States-Israel military conflict with Iran erupted and Iran exercised its de facto control over this passage, it did not merely rattle global energy markets. It made a direct and devastating announcement to New Delhi: your supply is cut.
India is particularly exposed in a way that few nations are. Approximately 60 percent of India's LPG consumption is sourced through imports. Of that imported share, roughly 90 percent flows through the Strait of Hormuz. When Iran sealed off that passage to nations it considers hostile, India's supply chain was severed with surgical precision. The arithmetic is brutal: India has lost, almost overnight, somewhere between 50 and 55 percent of its total LPG supply. Daily production has effectively halved.
Meanwhile, the only two alternative pipeline routes that exist — Saudi Arabia's East-West pipeline reaching the Red Sea port of Yanbu, and the UAE's Habshan-Fujairah pipeline bypassing the Strait entirely — are nowhere near sufficient in volume or flexibility to compensate for what India has lost. They are lifelines designed for a world that is not currently on fire. The question global markets are asking is no longer whether energy prices will rise. It is how high, and for how long.
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