New Delhi: Trading volume on the Indian Gas Exchange (IGX) fell 8% year-on-year in March to 4.8 metric million British thermal units (mmBtu) because of a decline in supplies amid the ongoing war in West Asia. Trading volume was down 11% month-on-month. GIXI, the benchmark price index of IGX, was ₹998 per mmBtu for March, up 18% year-on-year, IGX said in a statement.
About 93% of the traded volume was domestic gas at the ceiling price ($8.9/MMBtu) allocated to priority sectors, while 7% was free-market or imported gas.
IGX offers delivery-based trade in eight different spot contracts such as intraday, day-ahead, daily, weekday, weekly, fortnightly and monthly (up to 12 months), balance of month, and two long-duration contracts – 3 months and 6 months – linked to the benchmarks GIXI, JKM, WIM & Dated Brent. Trading of regasified-LNG (R-LNG), which is imported, has seen the most significant hit so far. It usually accounts for 47% of the overall trade.
Data from IGX showed that in FY26, IGX traded the highest ever gas volume of 76.8 million MMBtu, an increase of 28% year-on-year. Around 47% of traded volumes were free-market gas and 53% domestic high pressure high temperature (HPHT) gas at a ceiling price. A total of 1,924 trades were executed in FY26, it said.
Choke point
About 40-45% of India’s LNG imports come from Qatar and other key suppliers in West Asia such as the UAE and Oman. The US and Australia are the other sources of LNG imports. With the ongoing blockade of the Strait of Hormuz and attacks on Ras Laffan industrial City, a large chunk of India’s imports are currently halted. This crunch has affected several downstream industries, including fertilizers and steel.
However, the ministry of petroleum and natural gas announced that, effective Monday, the government has restored gas supplies for domestic fertilizer plants to approximately 90% of pre-war levels.
The government has prioritized natural gas supplies to city gas distribution for domestic cooking and transport. It has also developed a model draft ‘State CBG Policy’ to encourage a cleaner, more secure and self-reliant energy future. The model policy aims to serve as a guide for states to create their own investor-friendly and implementation-oriented ecosystem for compressed biogas (CBG) development. The statement added that states opting for this measure will receive priority in the next round of additional commercial LPG allocations.
India imported about 27 million tonnes of LNG worth $14.9 billion in FY25. Although the country produces about 50% of its natural gas requirement, the majority of its domestic production goes towards city gas distribution, which includes piped natural gas (PNG) for cooking and compressed natural gas (CNG) for transport.
