India Expands Piped Natural Gas Network, Boosts Clean Energy Efforts
India has made significant strides towards cleaner household energy with an expanded Piped Natural Gas (PNG) network. The City Gas Distribution (CGD) network, which consists of pipelines and related infrastructure, provides PNG to homes, commercial businesses, and industrial facilities across 309 Geographical Areas (GAs) nationwide.
As of August 18, 2026, the CGD network boasts approximately 1.74 crore domestic PNG connections. To further enhance PNG accessibility, the government launched the Incentive Scheme for Promotion of Domestic PNG Connections on August 18, 2026, which went into effect on September 1, 2026.
The incentive structure includes a required minimum number of connections for each geographical area during a defined performance period. Entities that go beyond the threshold for adding billed domestic connections will gain an additional allocation of 200 Standard Cubic Metres (SCM) of domestically produced Administered Price Mechanism (APM) gas, which is cheaper than the current Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG).
By substituting LNG with APM gas, the overall cost of sourcing gas for CGD entities is expected to decrease significantly. This shift could reduce the payback period for capital expenditures on domestic connections from about ten years to an estimated three years.