Union Petroleum Minister Hardeep Singh Puri on Monday, 13 July 2026 credited Prime Minister Narendra Modi's long-term energy policy decisions for shielding Indian households from the global energy disruption triggered by the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, asserting that India faced no gas shortage, no rationing, and no disruption to cooking fuel supplies across crores of families.

Context

Posting in Hindi on X, Puri declared: 'यह नया भारत है, जो संकट से विचलित नहीं होता' ('This is the new India, which is not rattled by crisis') — framing the episode as proof that India's preparedness, diplomacy, and decisive leadership can convert challenges into opportunities. The post came against the backdrop of the Strait of Hormuz closure, a critical maritime chokepoint through which a significant share of the world's crude oil and LPG shipments pass, triggering anxiety across energy-importing nations.

Puri described the biggest domestic challenge as ensuring the continued availability of LPG for households, noting that crores of Indian families depend on cooking gas for their daily needs. He credited decisions taken 'years ago' under Modi's leadership for making India resilient enough to weather the disruption.

Policy Backdrop

The minister pointed to a cluster of structural measures as the pillars of India's energy resilience. He cited the expansion of India's crude oil sourcing from 27 countries to 41 countries, a significant diversification of import origins that reduced dependence on any single supply corridor. Alongside this, he highlighted the expansion of domestic refining capacity.

Crucially, Puri stated that domestic LPG production was scaled up from 34,000 metric tonnes per day to 55,000 metric tonnes per day — a jump he described as India's 'greatest strength' during the crisis. These measures, he argued, were the result of forward-looking policy choices and not reactive responses to the immediate disruption. The Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana, launched in May 2016, had already extended LPG connections to below-poverty-line households, deepening the government's stake in uninterrupted cooking-gas supply.

Stakeholders and Impact

Puri highlighted the direct consumer benefit: ordinary LPG subscribers are currently receiving cylinders at approximately ₹600 below the actual market price, while more than 10.56 crore Ujjwala beneficiary families are receiving cylinders at ₹900 below the prevailing price. This subsidy architecture, he implied, held firm even as global energy prices came under pressure from the Hormuz disruption.

The scale of the Ujjwala programme — covering over 10.56 crore households — means the government's ability to sustain uninterrupted supply and subsidised pricing during a global supply shock carries significant social and political weight, particularly for rural and low-income families who have limited alternatives to piped or bottled cooking gas.

What's Next

The minister's post signals that the government is likely to lean on this episode as a validation of its decade-long energy security architecture, including import diversification, domestic production expansion, and targeted subsidies. Parliamentary discussions on petroleum subsidy allocations and updates to strategic petroleum reserve infrastructure are expected to reference this period as a stress-test that India successfully passed. As global energy supply chains remain volatile, the government's ability to sustain both the production ramp-up and the subsidy differential for Ujjwala households will be the defining metric of whether this resilience holds over the longer term.