New Delhi: India is sitting on comfortable fuel stockpiles and faces no supply disruptions despite the ongoing conflict in West Asia, Petroleum and Natural Gas Minister Hardeep Singh Puri said on Tuesday — but warned that state-run Oil Marketing Companies (OMCs) are losing Rs 1,000 crore every single day and cannot absorb losses indefinitely.
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Speaking at the CII Annual Business Summit, Puri said the country entered the crisis well-stocked and had since expanded domestic production to cover gaps left by disrupted imports. "We have no supply-side problems," he said. "Today, the country has more than enough stocks of crude oil, LNG and LPG. When this crisis began, there were some concerns, but we converted the challenge into an opportunity."
India currently holds around 60 days of crude oil supplies, 60 days of LNG inventories and 45 days of LPG reserves, he said.
The supply-side comfort comes with a steep fiscal cost. Puri said the combined under-recovery on petrol, diesel and LPG for the current quarter has climbed to nearly Rs 1.98 lakh crore, with actual losses estimated at around Rs 1 lakh crore — enough to erase the profits that Indian Oil Corporation, Bharat Petroleum and Hindustan Petroleum earn over an entire year.
At current crude prices, the three companies are losing Rs 14 per litre on petrol, Rs 42 per litre on diesel, and Rs 674 per cylinder on LPG. "My oil companies are losing 1,000 crores a day," Puri said. "So we will have to start worrying about these things."
Petrol and diesel have not seen a price increase in four years, currently retailing at Rs 94.77 and Rs 87.67 per litre respectively. LPG prices were raised by Rs 60 per cylinder in March, but remain well below cost.
Puri said the government has significantly scaled up domestic LPG production to reduce dependence on Gulf shipments. "We have ramped up our domestic production of LPG, which used to be 36,000 metric tonnes per day. We have now taken it up to 54,000 metric tonnes per day," he said.
Previously, around 60 percent of India's LPG imports moved through the Strait of Hormuz, through which roughly 20 percent of global energy supplies transit. The minister said alternative sourcing arrangements had been put in place swiftly, without any supply disruptions or dry-outs at the retail level.
Fuel demand has held up through the crisis, with petrol consumption rising around 6 percent. LPG demand has moderated to about 75,000 metric tonnes per day from nearly 90,000 metric tonnes earlier. "Some demand for LPG has come down. It used to be 90,000 metric tons. It has come down to 75. Some of it is because of the temperature. But even otherwise, I think the prudent supply and demand side, we have done very well, and I have no reason to believe that we will not do well in the future," Puri said.
Puri defended Prime Minister Narendra Modi's recent appeal to citizens to conserve fuel and cut oil imports, describing it as forward-looking rather than a signal of imminent restrictions or rationing. "The Prime Minister's statement is very visionary. It looks to the future — that if this were to continue, we also have to look at what we can do in terms of lifestyle changes. It's not that something is going to happen. That's all negative, panic-creating activity," he said.
He urged households and industries to shift from LPG to piped natural gas where infrastructure is available, saying pipeline networks and LNG supplies are being rapidly expanded.
The minister said he conducts daily reviews with the chairmen and managing directors of state oil companies. "I review the situation every day, along with the CMDs of the oil sector for an hour or an hour and a half. There is absolutely no cause for anxiety," he said.
He acknowledged the current crisis had forced a broader reassessment of India's strategic energy storage policies and supply chain architecture. "The experience since February 2026 means you have to rethink everything," he said.
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India plans to expand refining capacity to 320 million metric tonnes annually by 2030 from around 260 million currently, and the government is stepping up outreach to global oil majors to accelerate domestic exploration under expanded licensing rounds.
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