New Delhi (India), 9th April 2023: India now imports twice as much crude oil from Russia as it does from Iraq, the country’s traditional main oil supplier, reaching a new high of 1.64 million barrels per day in March. However, as growth has slowed, the purchases seem to have reached a plateau.
According to energy cargo tracker Vortexa, Russia remained the sole largest supplier of crude oil, which is transformed into petrol and diesel at refineries, for a sixth consecutive month by providing more than one-third of all the oil India purchased.
Prior to the start of the Russia-Ukraine conflict in February 2022, Russia had a market share of less than 1% in India’s imports; by March 2022, that percentage had increased to 1.64 million barrels per day, or 34%.
The amount of oil purchased from Russia in March was double the amount of oil purchased from Iraq, which has been India’s top oil supplier since 2017–18, at 0.82 million barrels per day (bpd).
India, the third-largest crude importer in the world after China and the United States, has been snatching up Russian oil that was on sale after some in the West avoided it as retaliation for Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.
