Russia becomes the top oil provider for India
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New Delhi: Overtaking Saudi Arabia and Iraq, Russia became India's topmost oil supplier in October, PTI reported citing data from energy cargo tracker Vortexa.
In March, Russian supply was just 0.2 per cent of all oil imported to India. But in October, it shipped 935,556 barrels per day (bpd) of crude oil, which is the highest ever, making 22 per cent of India's total crude imports.
While Iraq's contribution stands at 20.5 per cent, Saudi Arabia's stands at 16 per cent.
After the West put sanctions on Russia after its invasion of Ukraine, oil shipments to India increased. While India imported just 36,255 barrels from Russia in December 2021, Iraq shipped 1.05 million bpd and Saudi 952,625 bpd, Vortexa reported.
In March, 68,600 bpd of Russian oil reached India, 266,617 bpd in the following month and peaked at 942,694 bpd in June, becoming the second supplier for that month after Iraq.
The Indian government has been vehemently defending its trade with Russia, saying it has to source oil from where it is cheapest.
Indian government strongly defended its trade with Russia saying that oil needed to be sourced from where it is the cheapest.
"In FY22 (April 2021 to March 2022), the purchases of Russian oil was 0.2 per cent (of all oil imported by India). We still buy only a quarter of what Europe buys in one afternoon," Oil Minister Hardeep Singh Puri told CNN in Abu Dhabi last week.
"We owe a moral duty to our consumers. We have a 1.34 billion population, and we have to ensure that they are supplied with energy...whether it's petrol, diesel." On being asked if India faces a moral conflict due to import from Russia amid the latter's conflict with Ukraine, he had stated: "Absolutely none. There is no moral conflict. We don't buy from X or Y. We buy whatever is available. The government does not buy, it's the oil companies which do the buying."
India has also remained non-committal on a plan proposed by the G7 group of nations (UK, US, Canada, France, Germany, Italy and Japan) to cap the price of oil purchased from Russia as a means of limiting Moscow's revenue.