Amidst the Iran-Israel war, India did this together with Russia! It left many countries behind
Due to the Iran-Israel war, the price of crude oil has increased a lot. Now America has also jumped into this fight. Due to this, there is turmoil in the oil market. India is taking advantage of this opportunity and buying a lot of oil from Russia.
According to the Kpler company, India can buy 2 to 2.2 million barrels of crude oil from Russia every day in June. This will be the highest in the last two years. This is more than the oil bought from Iraq, Saudi Arabia, UAE and Kuwait combined. In May, India bought 1.96 million barrels of oil from Russia every day. India’s oil imports from America have also increased. In June, India bought 439,000 barrels of oil from America every day. In May, this figure was 280,000 barrels per day. According to Kpler, oil imports from the Middle East will be around 2 million barrels per day for the whole month. This is less than last month.
How much oil is imported daily?
India is the third largest oil importer and consumer country in the world. India buys about 5.1 million barrels of crude oil from abroad every day. This oil is converted into fuels like petrol and diesel in refineries.
India used to buy most of the oil from the Middle East earlier. But after Russia’s attack on Ukraine in February 2022, India started buying large quantities of oil from Russia. This happened because Western countries had imposed many sanctions on Russia. Due to this, Russian oil became cheaper than other oils. Due to Russian oil being cheaper, India bought a lot of oil. Earlier, the share of Russian oil in India’s total oil imports was less than 1%. But it increased to 40-44%.
How much impact will the attack on Iran have?
The ongoing war in the Middle East has not yet affected the supply of oil. Kepler’s lead research analyst Sumit Ritoliya told PTI that there has been no problem in the supply of oil so far. But the movement of ships shows that oil loading from the Middle East may decrease in the coming days.
India may have to change its strategy
According to Sumit Ritoliya, ship owners are afraid to send empty tankers to the Gulf. The number of such ships has decreased from 69 to just 40. The signals of ships going from the Gulf of Oman to the Middle East and Gulf (MEG) have also been halved. This shows that the supply of oil from MEG may decrease. Due to this, India may have to change its strategy of buying oil in the future.
