Feet in two boats

Nepal cannot look to both keep increasing the import of LPG and to electrify its economy.

Nepal’s contradictory energy policies expose the hollow rhetoric of our top political leaders. KP Sharma Oli, the current Prime Minister and chair of the CPN-UML, retracted the proposal to transport liquefied petroleum gases (LPGs) from India to Chitwan during his previous premiership in 2020, claiming that the country is working to increase hydropower capacity as an alternative to cooking gases. Yet, the same party’s Minister for Industry, Damodar Bhandari, recently visited New Delhi to discuss a gas pipeline project. Although Nepal initially requested the LPG pipeline project (from Motihari in India to Sarlahi in Nepal) to be built with a grant from its southern neighbour, insiders are sceptical that such an ambitious undertaking can be hard without a long-term agreement.