Published 8 August 2026 · v1.0.0 · PPAC sectoral consumption workbooks (FY2015-16 → Q1 FY2026-27, provisional) · PPAC Snapshot of India’s Oil & Gas Data, July-26 edition

A decade of who burns India’s gas

Consumption grew 44%. Over half of that growth was city gas.

India’s natural gas consumption rose from 47,849 to 69,048 MMSCM between FY2015-16 and FY2025-26. The composition of that demand changed far more than its size: CGD tripled from 5,464 to 16,516 MMSCM — 11.4% of the pool to 23.9%, and 52% of all incremental demand over the decade — while gas-fired power fell outright, from 10,889 to 7,960 MMSCM, its share halving from 22.8% to 11.5%.

The crossover, month by month

April 2026 was the first month; May and June confirmed it; the quarter settled it.

What makes the crossover structural rather than cyclical is what each side is doing: in FY2025-26, within a national pool that shrank 3.0%, CGD grew +9.7% while fertiliser fell 4.1% and power fell 10.5%. CGD is the only large sector still compounding — and the infrastructure behind it explains why: 8,980 CNG stations and 1.73 crore domestic PNG connections as of 31 May 2026, with Maharashtra (45.0 lakh) and Gujarat (39.0 lakh) alone holding nearly half the country’s piped-gas kitchens.

Who is exposed to the import price

The two biggest burners buy very different gas.

India’s gas is now majority imported: RLNG supplied 51.5% of consumption in FY2025-26 and 52.7% in Q1 FY2026-27, with PPAC putting overall import dependency at roughly 50% in both FY2024-25 and FY2025-26. But that dependency is not evenly spread:

• Fertiliser runs on imported gas: 87% of its June 2026 burn was RLNG (1,446 of 1,655 MMSCM). Every dollar on the LNG price flows through urea production cost into the fertiliser subsidy — the same channel this blog traced in the fertiliser subsidy piece. The state’s largest gas consumer until this quarter was, in effect, a fiscal LNG position.
• CGD is half-and-half: 49% RLNG in June 2026 (850 of 1,748 MMSCM), the rest domestic gas — much of it allocated at the administered domestic price. As CGD’s share grows, the tug-of-war over cheap domestic gas allocation between kitchens, vehicles and fertiliser plants becomes the sector’s central policy question.
• The supply side is not growing to meet it. Gross domestic production was 36,113 MMSCM in FY2024-25 and 34,776 in FY2025-26 — falling — and LNG terminal capacity runs far ahead of use: 53.5 MMTPA installed, with Dahej at 91.9% utilisation in Apr–Jun 2026 while Kochi ran at 26.3% and Dabhol at 39.2%. India’s LNG buying happens in the same global market Europe just cornered.

What this means

Three consequences, one per constituency.

• For gas policy: the marginal molecule now goes to a consumer sector with millions of retail price-takers, not a handful of plants with negotiated allocations. Domestic-gas allocation priority for CGD, decided administratively, is now the single biggest lever over urban fuel bills.
• For the fertiliser budget: losing the top-consumer slot changes nothing about exposure — at 87% RLNG-fed, the subsidy bill remains an LNG derivative, and a shrinking domestic allocation makes it more so.
• For the “stranded assets” ledger: gas power’s decade — share halved, absolute burn down 27% against a fleet that was built for far more — is the same build-ahead-of-demand pattern this blog has documented in LNG terminals and ethanol distilleries. The gas-fired fleet is the oldest member of the club.

Sources. Sectoral consumption — PPAC, Natural Gas Historical Sectoral Consumption workbook (FY2015-16 → FY2025-26, provisional; sector reclassification noted at FY2020-21) and Current-Year Sectoral Consumption workbook (monthly, Q1 FY2026-27, provisional), both downloaded from ppac.gov.in, read 8 August 2026. Headline gas balance, import dependency (~50%), production (36,113 → 34,776 MMSCM), LNG terminal capacity (53.5 MMTPA) and utilisation, and CGD infrastructure (8,980 CNG stations; 1,72,55,095 domestic PNG connections as of 31.05.2026, source PNGRB) — PPAC, Snapshot of India’s Oil & Gas Data, Monthly Ready Reckoner, July-26 edition (data for June 2026), Tables 18, 21 and 22 and the month’s highlights. All shares and growth rates computed from these tables; the two provisional series differ by ~0.4% on the FY2025-26 total and are cited separately where used. MMSCM = million standard cubic metres; PPAC’s conversion is 1 MMT LNG = 1,325 MMSCM.

What would fix this

• PPAC should publish a reconciliation note bridging the sectoral workbook total (69,048 MMSCM) and the Snapshot consumption series (68,753 MMSCM) for FY2025-26, so that users of two provisional series from the same publisher know which to cite and why they differ.
• PPAC should publish a back-cast of sectoral consumption on the post-FY2020-21 classification for the years before the break, so that the growth of “Other/Miscellaneous” from 9.0% to 14.1% of the pool can be compared across the whole decade without a seam.
• The Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas should publish monthly domestic-gas allocations by sector and priority category alongside PPAC’s consumption data, so that the administrative lever this piece calls the biggest influence on urban fuel bills can be tracked as CGD demand grows.
• PPAC should add sector-wise average landed gas prices, split by domestic gas and RLNG, to its sectoral consumption workbooks, so that price exposure for fertiliser plants and CGD entities can be read directly rather than inferred from RLNG volume shares.
• The Central Electricity Authority should publish gas-based installed capacity and plant-level utilisation in the same annual table as PPAC’s power-sector gas burn, so that the stranded-asset question for a fleet whose burn fell 27% in a decade can be measured, not characterised.

These are proposals from this blog, not recommendations any agency has adopted.

About this article: Researched, written and edited by Umashankar Triplicane Dwarakanathan, with AI research assistance; every figure is meant to trace to the primary source cited. See the Editorial Policy for how sourcing, AI use and corrections work.