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How India dodged the worst of the Hormuz energy shock. The fuel crisis that never arrived

A four-month closure of the Strait of Hormuz should have left India dangerously exposed. Instead, it became a stress test the country had spent a decade quietly preparing to pass.

Every so often, a crisis arrives that does not merely test resilience but redefines it. The prolonged disruption in the Strait of Hormuz was one such moment, and among the most significant stress tests for global energy security in years. The strait carries around a quarter of the world’s seaborne crude and petroleum products and about a fifth of global LNG trade. As tensions escalated, markets reacted at once: Brent crossed US$120 a barrel, war-risk premiums and tanker freight rates spiked, and energy-importing governments braced for shortages, inflation, and slower growth.

For India, dependent on imports for nearly 88 per cent of its crude, 51 per cent of its natural gas, and around 60 per cent of its LPG, the risk looked acute. Conventional assessments would have placed it among the most exposed economies, facing supply shocks, inflationary pressure, and economic dislocation. Yet the energy crisis everyone expected never fully arrived.

Through months of unprecedented volatility, India avoided fuel shortages, managed pressure on LPG supplies, and moderated the impact of rising global prices on consumers. It did so by combining swift policy interventions, coordinated institutional action, and active energy diplomacy to hold both supply security and market confidence.

Also Read: India’s fuel story shouldn’t come at the cost of food security

Preparedness, not luck

What set India’s response apart was not the speed of its interventions alone, but the depth of the preparation beneath them. A decade of sustained investment in refining infrastructure, supply diversification, and institutional readiness meant the system had slack to draw on.

A large and flexible refining base, backed by strategic petroleum reserves and an increasingly........

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