16/08/2026
🚨GAS QUEUES IN THE RAIN A CRISIS NEPAL KEEPS RECREATING
This week’s scene needs no caption:hundreds of Nepalis standing in monsoon rain,empty cylinders in hand, waiting for LPG gas that may or may not arrive.Some go home empty-handed after a full day.
Here’s the uncomfortable part this is not a one-off. It’s the third LPG crisis Nepal has faced in 2026 alone (February, April-May, and now August). Before that, winters brought the same scenes.
This is not a supply problem.It’s a design problem.
📌 WHY THIS KEEPS HAPPENING
→ Single-supplier dependency: Nepal’s LPG comes almost entirely from India, trucked in bulk. When one Indian refinery pauses for maintenance, Nepal has no Plan B and it keeps happening.
→ NOC’s boom-bust rationing:Half-filled cylinders introduced during one shortage, then a sudden switch back to full cylinders and the switch itself triggers the next shortage as households hoard partial fills.
→ Panic buying,engineered by mistrust:When a state monopoly has a track record of running dry,consumers stockpile the moment rumors spread.The fear becomes the shortage.
→ No pipeline infrastructure: Gas still moves by truck, not pipeline slow, exposed to bottlenecks and easy to disrupt.
→ Weak enforcement:Black marketing and overpricing complaints resurface every cycle with cylinders reportedly reselling at more than 3x the official price.
🌏 WHAT THE NEIGHBOURHOOD DOES DIFFERENTLY
→ India built dedicated LPG pipeline corridors and layered in Aadhaar/e-KYC-linked distribution digital verification that curbs diversion and panic hoarding.
→ Bangladesh broke the monopoly.Private players like Bashundhara and Omera compete in the LPG market so one company’s disruption doesn’t freeze the whole country.
→ Sri Lanka,post-2022,learned the hardest version of this lesson its fuel collapse came from zero reserve buffer and single-channel imports.Recovery meant diversifying suppliers and building actual stockpiles,not just managing queues better.
📌 THE REAL DIAGNOSIS
Nepal keeps treating each shortage as a supply blip a hotline,a rationing order an inspection drive.What’s missing is the structural fix:multiple suppliers,real distribution infrastructure,a strategic reserve and a monopoly that has earned back consumer trust.
Until that changes,this will not be the last time citizens stand in the rain for something that should simply be at the depot.