Says India continues imports based on economic rationale

PTI New Delhi

India has not halted oil purchases from Russia in response to the US President's tariff threat and continues to buy based solely on economic considerations, said AS Sahney, Chairman of Indian Oil Corporation (IOC), the country's largest oil firm.

Purchase volumes may fluctuate monthly based on the discounts offered on Russian crude grades like Urals. While discounts had previously reached as high as USD 40 per barrel, they have narrowed to just USD 1.5 late last month, resulting in reduced offtake. Discounts have since widened to about USD 2.70.

However, India's intent to continue buying Russian oil remains unchanged. India became the largest customer of Russian oil from 2022, after western countries shunned Russian oil and imposed sanctions on Moscow for its invasion of Ukraine.

Sahney said refiners like IOC buy crude oil from Russia purely on economic consideration and have not been asked to cut or boost purchase in response to US tariffs, he said. "There is no pause," he said. Russian oil has continued to flow to Indian refiners in July as well as this month.

"We continue to buy, purely based on economic considerations, that is to say if the pricing and characteristics of the crude make sense in our scheme of processing, we buy," he told reporters here. "No special effort is being made to either increase or decrease (the import volumes). We are buying crude as per economic considerations," he said.

Imports from Russia made up for 22-23 per cent of all the crude oil that IOC refineries processed in the April-June period. US President Donald Trump last week announced an additional 25 per cent tariff on US imports from India -- raising the overall duty to 50 per cent -- as a penalty for the country's continued imports of Russian oil.