The West Asia crisis is a critical test of energy security, with India’s response showing operational strength while underlining the next phase of its evolving energy strategy.
The war in West Asia has done what crises often do: it has stripped away comforting abstractions. It has reminded the world that energy security is not a slogan of the past, but the operating logic of the present. The Strait of Hormuz still carries around 20 million barrels a day of oil—about one-fifth of global petroleum liquids consumption—and around one-fifth of global Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) trade, with few practical alternatives if the passage is disrupted. For any serious importing nation, this is not just a maritime statistic; it is a measure of strategic exposure.
For India, the stakes are higher than for most. The country already consumes about 5.6 million barrels of crude oil a day, meets roughly 88 percent of its crude requirement and 51 percent of its gas requirement through imports, and is expected by the International Energy Agency to account for more than one-third of global oil demand growth through 2030. In other words, India is rising at precisely the moment when the geopolitical foundations of fossil-fuel trade are becoming more fragile.
The most important lesson from the present crisis is not merely that India is vulnerable. It is that the Modi government has understood the problem in the right way. It has not treated the war as a headline event requiring rhetorical reassurance. It has treated it as a systems challenge. The Prime Minister’s second special meeting of the Cabinet Committee on Security reviewed supply diversification for Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) and LNG, power-sector measures for summer stability, fertilizer availability, enforcement against hoarding, control rooms for real-time monitoring, and diplomatic efforts to secure safe passage through Hormuz. This is not panic management. It is state capacity in motion.
Energy security in 2026 is no longer only about crude. It is also about fertiliser feedstocks, gas allocation, maritime insurance, retail confidence, logistics continuity, and the ability of governments to keep misinformation from converting stress into disorder. The official inter-ministerial briefing makes the breadth of the challenge clear: the Gulf accounts for 20–30 percent of India’s urea imports, 30 percent of DAP imports, and nearly half of India’s LNG imports. Yet the same briefing also shows how the government has moved to hold the line—raising gas supply to urea plants, building fertiliser stocks, diversifying sourcing across multiple countries, expanding PNG connections, increasing domestic LPG production, conducting anti-hoarding raids, and keeping port operations normal.
The real achievement is not that India has eliminated vulnerability; no major importer can. It is that the government has prevented vulnerability from cascading into visible disorder for the common citizen. Domestic LPG prices have been held steady, essential commodities have remained under watch, fertiliser stocks have been built ahead of Kharif, and public communication has been institutionalised as part of crisis management. In an age of weaponised rumour and supply-chain panic, this is not administrative detail. It is strategic governance.
If the immediate response deserves credit, the larger question is whether India can now convert resilience into doctrine. That doctrine should rest on one central idea: strategic optionality. The old model of energy security was simple—buy more, store more, subsidise more. The new model must be more sophisticated: diversify sources, deepen buffers, reduce the share of strategic commodities in final demand, and build diplomatic and maritime instruments that lower the probability of disruption in the first place.
The first pathway is maritime power. India cannot remain one of the world’s largest energy importers while outsourcing too much of the shipping and insurance risk that comes with it. Official data already show that only about one-fifth of India’s trade cargo is carried on Indian-flagged or Indian-owned vessels, even as the oil and gas sector accounts for nearly 28 percent of the country’s trade by volume. The answer is not autarky.
It is a calibrated build-out of Indian shipping capacity: long-term charter aggregation by public-sector energy buyers, financing support for tanker acquisition, stronger Indian participation in LNG and product tanker segments, and deeper naval-maritime coordination with Gulf partners to protect freedom of navigation. Energy security without maritime capability is an incomplete doctrine.
The second pathway is to widen strategic buffers. India’s existing strategic petroleum reserve capacity of 5.33 million metric tonnes is valuable, but not sufficient for the scale of the challenge ahead. The case for accelerating Phase II is now stronger, not weaker. India should also revisit the idea of combining strategic storage with commercial stockholding partnerships involving trusted suppliers. Such an approach would do three things at once: improve emergency coverage, deepen interdependence with key producers, and make India a more important node in the wider energy architecture of the Indian Ocean.
The third pathway is to treat fertiliser security as part of energy security. The current crisis has exposed a truth that policy often overlooks: India’s energy vulnerability is mediated through agriculture. LNG disruptions affect urea production; volatility in ammonia, sulphur and freight affects farm economics; fertiliser insecurity can become food inflation. New Delhi should therefore move beyond transactional procurement towards long-duration upstream partnerships in ammonia, LNG and critical fertiliser inputs, especially with partners in West Asia, Africa and Eurasia. A country of India’s scale cannot rely indefinitely on spot-market agility alone.
The fourth pathway is demand-side sovereignty. The most durable energy-security policy is not only better importing. It is needing less imported fuel per unit of growth. Here, the Modi years have already laid important foundations: India reached 50 percent of installed electricity capacity from non-fossil sources ahead of schedule, and the Union Ministry of New and Renewable Energy now reports that cumulative installed capacity from non-fossil sources stands at 52.5 percent. That matters not only for climate diplomacy but for national security. Every megawatt of reliable domestic renewable power, every unit of storage, every electric mobility gain, every increment in ethanol blending, every improvement in industrial efficiency reduces the economy’s exposure to distant conflict.
The fifth pathway is diplomatic energy statecraft. India is among the few major powers with the strategic credibility to speak across rival political camps in West Asia while retaining strong ties with Washington, Moscow and key Gulf capitals. It should use that advantage more deliberately. Not by grandstanding, but by quietly shaping a diplomatic agenda around protected energy infrastructure, freedom of navigation, humanitarian transit, and de-risked essential commodities corridors.
The Prime Minister’s conversation with the Saudi Crown Prince, and the official emphasis on safe shipping lines and energy infrastructure, point to the right instinct. That instinct now needs to be institutionalised into a more explicit Indian doctrine for regional stability. The world’s leading agencies have already mapped the challenge. The International Energy Agency (IEA) warns that India’s role in global oil and gas markets will expand sharply this decade, with LNG imports expected to more than double by 2030. The IMF has noted that, historically, a 10 percent rise in oil prices cuts India’s real GDP growth by around 20 basis points and raises CPI inflation by 30–40 basis points. These are not just market sensitivities, but are reminders that energy shocks can become macroeconomic shocks with unusual speed.
That is why the war in West Asia must be seen not simply as a crisis to be endured, but as an audit to be passed. India has done well in the first test: it has shown calm, coordination and competence under pressure.
The harder test lies ahead. Can it turn a capable response into a lasting doctrine? Can it move from diversification to true optionality, from import management to strategic leverage, from vulnerability mitigation to energy statesmanship? The answer will define more than India’s fuel bill. It will define whether the country enters the next decade as a large energy consumer, or as a shaping power in the energy order itself.
The author is Director General, The Energy & Climate Initiatives Society (ENCIS). Views are his own.
