The government is contemplating establishing 30 days of strategic reserves for liquefied petroleum gas (LPG), a move that marks a realisation that building such storage facilities (an initiative that had been overlooked until now) is no longer optional following the supply disruptions caused by the West Asia crisis.
Sources said that the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas and oil marketing companies (OMCs) have been deliberating establishment of caverns for storing LPG, on the lines of two caverns with a cumulative capacity of 1.4 lakh tonnes – which can meet roughly 1.5 days of the country’s requirements. India consumes roughly 80,000 tonnes of LPG per day.
“OMCs have been working for some time on plans for having more caverns or sites to store LPG. The present war has severely impacted India’s imports. Consequently, they are now moving aggressively on this as a medium-to-long term strategy for locating possible sites and creating storage in caverns like in Mangalore and Visakhapatnam,” said one of the sources.
The matter was also reportedly discussed in the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO). Storage for crude oil and LPG are now priority, the source added.
Pushed to the brink
India already has two caverns to store the critical commodity, which is the main cooking medium for over 33 crore consumers. State-run Hindustan Petroleum Corporation (HPCL) has an 80,000 tonnes underground LPG rock cavern in Mangalore. Similarly, South Asia LPG — a JV of HPCL and TotalEnergies Marketing Holdings India — has a 60,000-tonne cavern in Visakhapatnam.
Small countries such as Japan and South Korea, that depend mostly on imports for energy consumption, already have huge strategic/commercial storages for crude oil, LNG and LPG totalling about 250 days and 200 days respectively, with a minimum of 50-60 days storage for the key cooking and heating medium.
Globally, there are more than 80 LPG storage caverns. Underground caverns are among the safest options to store the commodity. As a pressurised propane-butane mix, LPG requires costly high-pressure or cryogenic facilities.
A senior official pointed out that the push to have more storage is getting priority now due to the “current crisis”.
“The government’s objective now, more than ever, is to establish storages. The present hostilities have made it quite clear that large consuming nations today have to have storages. This is pertinent not just from the perspective of energy security, but also for strategic autonomy to some extent to deal with frequent weaponisation of such resources,” the official explained.
India imports 60 per cent of its demand for the key cooking fuel. India consumed more than 33 million tonnes (mt) of LPG in FY25, of which roughly 20.67 mt was imported. Around 90 per cent of this is imported from West Asia transiting the SoH.
Published on April 9, 2026