The Ministry of Petroleum & Natural Gas (MoPNG) has increased the allocation of natural gas to the fertiliser sector to 95 per cent of their average consumption in the last six months, effective Thursday.

Sujata Sharma, Joint Secretary in the Ministry of Petroleum & Natural Gas (MoPNG), said on Wednesday that based on available inventory and scheduled liquefied natural gas (LNG) cargo arrivals, the overall gas allocation to fertiliser plants is being further enhanced by 5 per cent to reach approximately 95 per cent of their six-month average consumption, effective April 9, 2026.

She was speaking at the daily inter-ministerial briefing on West Asia.

Prior to this, the MoPNG increased gas supply to fertiliser manufacturing units to 90 per cent, effective April 6, 2026.

For comparison, India’s fertiliser sector consumed 9,753 million standard cubic meters (MSCM) of natural gas in H1 FY26, which accounts for 28 per cent of the country’s cumulative usage.

It averages roughly at 1,625 MSCM per month. In 9M FY26, the sector consumed 15,046 MSCM (28.6 per cent of total consumption), averaging at around 1,712 MSCM.

India generally consumes around 196 million standard cubic meters per day of natural gas, of which the fertiliser sector’s requirement is around 52 MSCMD. One MSCM of gas produces around 1,600 tonnes of urea. In FY25, total fertiliser sales stood at 656 lakh tonnes.

Even as the supply of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) continues to be affected by the prevailing geopolitical situation in West Asia, no dry-outs have been reported at LPG distributorships, emphasised Sharma.

Since March 23, 2026, about 8.9 lakh 5-kg Free Trade LPG (FTL) cylinders have been sold. Besides, PSU oil marketing companies (OMCs) have organised around 1,600 awareness camps for 5 Kg cylinders during the last 5 days, wherein more than 14,000 units were also sold.

On the brighter side, over 1.1 lakh 5 Kg FTL cylinders were sold across the country on Tuesday against a daily average of 77,000 in February 2026.

The total commercial LPG allocation has been increased to about 70 per cent of pre-crisis levels, including 10 per cent reform-linked allocation, Sharma said.

About 93,085 tonnes of commercial LPG, which is equivalent to over 49 lakh 19-kg cylinders, has been sold since March 14, 2026. On Tuesday, 6646 tonnes LPG, equivalent to over 3.5 lakh 19 Kg cylinders was sold.

In natural gas, priority sectors continue to receive protected supplies, including 100 per cent supply to domestic PNG and CNG transport.

The government is also encouraging LPG users who are near PNG centres to migrate to piped gas from LPG. Since March 2026, about 3.87 lakh PNG connections have been gasified and about 4.21 lakh additional customers have registered for new connections. More than 17,100 PNG consumers have surrendered their LPG connections so far.

To encourage cleaner, more secure and self-reliant energy future, the Government of India has developed a model draft State compressed bio gas (CBG) Policy.

The model policy is intended to serve as a comprehensive flexible guiding framework to enable States to create their own investor-friendly and implementation-oriented ecosystem for CBG development. Those States which opt for this, will be prioritised for the next tranche of additional allocation of commercial LPG.

Published on April 8, 2026