The real gauge of India's vulnerability to a war on the other side of the Arabian Sea was not the Sensex or the rupee, but the so-called 'surgery' that had been in progress for close to four months. The squat 19 kg cylinder behind the counter of each highway dhaba, each mid-range hotel kitchen, each small foundry and laundry. Those cylinders were available in abundance until the fighting in West Asia slowed the flow of oil through the Strait of Hormuz from the last week of February, at which point they were rationed and then quickly became scarce, and the price of running a commercial kitchen became a part of the survival calculus of millions of small businesses.

Finally, on June 25, the Centre took a sigh of relief. The Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas lifted the emergency sector-specific restrictions on commercial LPG and restored packed non-domestic LPG to pre-crisis level and bulk industrial LPG to half the pre-crisis level. The petroleum secretary had written to chief secretaries of all states and UTs to ensure unwinding is done in an orderly manner and state officials such as Assam's chief secretary passed the directive down the line. It was the first bit of good clean news for a restaurateur who had spent the spring calling three distributors to try to book one.

It is more the mechanics than the relief which is important, because it tells us how close to the edge the country sailed. As the shooting began, and shipping traffic through Hormuz ground to a halt, New Delhi grabbed the Essential Commodities Act and did the crude but efficient thing: It told refiners not to inject the C3 and C4 hydrocarbon streams propane and butane, the raw materials for cooking gas and a broad range of petrochemicals in anything except the LPG pool. Simply put, the government hijacked the molecules that would otherwise end up in plastics and chemicals, and redirected them to kitchens. There was no disruption in the supply of household food to the approximately 33 crore families that rely on it. That was the win. But quietly borne by industry, the cooking-gas queue was kept short by the petrochemical giants like Reliance Industries, which were compelled to slow down the production of high margin products.

The difference is on 25 June the molecules are being returned. The ministry has lowered the forced diversion of C3-C4 streams into the LPG pool and brought back the feedstock to petrochemical and downstream users as the domestic LPG output shot up, refiners having increased their production by about a third or so during the pinch. It hasn't done so without knowledge. The Centre for High Technology, an entity under the ministry, will divide and distribute freed up streams and report periodically, while indigenous LPG production must remain at a non-negotiable minimum of 40,000 tonnes per day. Meanwhile the state-run oil marketers have been instructed to maintain a complete and consolidated register of all the commercial and industrial consumers, which, if put to use, is either a sensible supply planning mechanism or the first step towards a permanent surveillance of commercial and industrial consumers. The ministry also took the occasion to encourage the commercial consumers to use piped natural gas, urging natural gas users already in PNG to continue using the same and urging the city gas distribution companies to shift all the eligible consumers from cylinders to PNG.

Now remove all the circular and the overall picture is grim. India imports nearly three-fifths of its LPG from foreign countries, with some nine out of 10 of the imported molecules coming from tankers from West Asian countries that pass through the narrow Strait of Hormuz, where only about one-fifth of the world's seaborne oil goes. It's the same country that is the third largest crude importer in the world, fourth largest refiner, and fifth largest finished petroleum product exporter an energy giant, yet one that is upstream of only one waterway it can't control. That waterway choked and the impact was not restricted to the fuel market. India has an estimated 9.1 million nationals working in the Gulf states who remit some 50 billion dollars annually, basically keeping the balance of payments in check. One research firm projected losses of up to half of a percentage point of GDP, if the tide were completely blocked over the entire timeframe of a complete Hormuz closure. In sum, a cooking-gas story is a remittances story, and a current-account story and a household-inflation story sewn together.

The price trail brings that to life. In normal times, the price of crude oil is around 70 dollars a barrel for the Brent variety; in early March, it crossed the 100 dollar threshold for the first time in four years, while Dubai varieties briefly dipped below record high. But as a fragile peace established itself this month the framework deal was inked on 17 June and the US navy's blockade was lifted the next day that war premium was quickly dissipated, and Brent returned to the low to mid 70s. Indian households paid the price for the round trip as their bills. The Government has absorbed a 60 rupees increase in March and two more increases by 29 rupees till June, in the regulated 14.2-kg domestic cylinder, keeping the headline price near 971 rupees for the general consumer while the government gives a lower price to the Ujjwala beneficiaries. CNG and piped gas were basically flat, just as the ministry continues to say it would like more commercial demand to be moved to the pipeline grid.

Those who might be tempted to see the order of 25 June as the all clear should take into account the strait itself, and the fact that the situation is far from settled. The deal is signed but the reopening is disputed. Tanker counts picked up in the third week in June, only to have a vessel hit by a projectile off Oman on 25 June the day of the LPG rollback which led the International Maritime Organization (IMO) to suspend its organized evacuation of stranded vessels and Iran's Revolutionary Guard to state that the path through Iranian waters is safe only if the tankers follow their designated routes. At one point, over 500 vessels were stuck in the Gulf, the war-risk insurance for tankers was several times higher than its pre-crisis price, and the Gulf's deep water central channel is still strewn with an estimated 80 mines that will take weeks to clear. Of all places, Panama Canal has been counting the windfall of rerouted traffic. Under Operation Sankalp, India's own navy escorted Indian flagged LPG carriers out of the danger zone in the spring. None of this looks like a crisis that's really over; it looks like one that's on hold.

Now it's where the episode has to be reckoned upon more firmly than a press note of relief. “Energy security” is not a market that clears, but more like an insurance policy the only thing that will prevent a working economy from turning into a stalling one comes the day it is in use, and the “insurance” cost is redundancy, which will seem like waste until it is not. India's stealthily made its purchases over the last few years diversifying crude with approximately 70 percent now coming in via routes that don't go through Hormuz compared with about 55 percent before; relying on Russian crude for about a third of its needs and signing a long-term American LPG deal designed to break the Gulf's monopoly and account for about one-tenth of annual imports. Those hedges, along with a 24/7 control room and the readiness to invoke emergency powers and ration industry for the sake of the kitchens are what kept the lights on when the strait closed. Such an institutional reflex did not occur a generation ago. It is a dividend of viewing the supply chain as a national issue and not just a 'lowest landed cost' issue.

The other side of the coin is that purchased insurance does not equate to reduced exposure. Nor can there be a diversification of the dependence on crude imports to 80–90pc and LPG imports to nearly 60pc in one budget cycle, and a nation that must ration their own factories to feed their own stoves has found a weakness that would be foolish to forget. The instinct that must transcend this crisis is to see India not just as a market that consumes the world's energy but as an economy that must build its own strategic buffer: greater domestic production; a more rapid and truly funded transition to piped gas and electrification; real strategic reserves and real capacity; procurement models that assume the next chokepoint will come without warning. It's not a slogan here, its risk management with the numbers stuck on.

At present, the owner of the dhaba can continue to collect his cylinder, the hotel can operate its banquet kitchen and the petrol chemical plant can pursue its margins. It is a genuine and deserved respite and credence goes to those who successfully pulled this off and saved 33 crore households from darkness. But the cylinder that is now running low, is the same cylinder, the supply route of which still passes through a hotly disputed 33-kilometre stretch monitored by mines and missiles. The water valve is turned back on. Its susceptibility, which necessitated its disabling, remains unchanged. The most costly saving of all is to treat the reprieve as the lesson and not as the warning.