Think Gas is targeting to add 4-5 lakh piped natural gas (PNG) consumers by December 2026 as the country’s second largest city gas distribution (CGD) firm aims to tap the momentum created by the government to migrate liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) consumers to piped gas.
“Four to five lakh households is what we ideally would love to have by December (2026), and we are working towards that. Hopefully we will be achieving that number, and the ecosystem will help us,” Vinukumar S Balakrishnan, Chief Marketing & Commercial Officer at Think Gas, told businessline.
Apart from what has been identified by the PNGRB, Think Gas is also strategising on initiatives to explore avenues to expand its network, he added.
For instance, Think Gas in April 2026 unveiled a first-of-its-kind GIS-enabled Integrated Network Availability platform, which enables customers to instantly check availability of PNG connections in their locality and apply seamlessly, simplifying access.
“The PNGRB gave us a number, close to four lakh, which we had to add. We are confident that we’ll be able to add those numbers. The idea being that now this is a very innovative approach they have taken in the sense that they are trying to enable us in terms of how we can maximise the infrastructure,” Balakrishnan noted.
West Asia effect
The year 2026 marks a significant turning point for the CGD sector, which began with the Petroleum and Natural Gas Regulatory Board’s (PNGRB) PNG National Drive 2.0 to add more consumers to Domestic PNG (D-PNG). The effort got a major push with the current West Asian conflict as the government in a bid to conserve LPG initiated policy measures to accelerate adoption of D-PNG.
The results are encouraging. For instance, around 10.02 lakh PNG connections have been gasified and infrastructure created for additional 3.22 lakh connections, since March 2026. Besides, another 9.94 lakh customers have been registered for new connections.
Balakrishnan agrees that the government push amidst the West Asian conflict helped migrate higher LOG consumers to PNG.
“I think the government helped us a lot in trying to give whatever visibility. The challenge was not really the volumes (LNG supply), because I think we had enough resources from where volumes could have come. What was challenging for the industry is the visibility in trying to understand what will be happening two weeks or four down the line and especially in the early stages of the crisis in March and that was really the challenge,” he noted.
On India adding more than a million PNG connections since March, he said the government actually utilised this situation very efficiently.
“It was an adversity, but created an opportunity out of it. Many of the long pending nagging issues related to permissions, authorities and all that cost of time have been streamlined and rationalised to a great extent in this period. In a very short period we have done this. Going forward we expect better penetration as compared to now. The PNGRB drive helped us,” he added.
Going ahead, he expresses optimism on the drive to add more PNG consumers.
“In many ways you can say the numbers, though they are better than what we’ve seen in the past, I still feel it was from a cold start. So, the numbers probably are only going to improve from now, because now people are actually working on the ecosystem, vendor supply network, manpower power, material planning, and all that. So I think these numbers are going to improve from here,” Balakrishnan emphasised.
As of May 2026, the company has expanded its network with more than 17,781 inch km of steel pipeline and over 23,912 inch km of Medium Density Polyethylene pipeline (MDPE). Its infrastructure is spread over 49 districts covering 10 per cent of India’s land mass and roughly 18 million households across 10 States. It has 19 geographical areas (GAs).