Petroleum Ministry responds to The Hindu editorial: Higher Russian oil imports part of deliberate strategy
The Indian government’s decision to import more oil from Russia is part of a longer strategy it deployed following the start of the West Asia
The Indian government’s decision to import more oil from Russia is part of a longer strategy it deployed following the start of the West Asia crisis and was part of a broader strategy to diversify sources of oil, the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural gas has said in response to an editorial by The Hindu on the matter. The Hindu had on July 9 reported that Russia’s share in India’s oil imports had risen to above 40% in May 2026 in both value as well as volume terms. The editorial, titled ‘Oil conundrum’ was published on July 13. In its response to The Hindu, the Ministry further said that Russia accounted for “more than half” of India’s oil imports in June 2026. ‘Deliberately engineered’ “The timeline the article omits is the one that matters: Hormuz effectively closed at the end of February 2026,” the Ministry said. As a result of this, nearly one-fifth of the world’s oil and gas that passed through the Strait of Hormuz was shut, with the exposure for India being even sharper as roughly 45-50% of crude oil imports transiting that single waterway, it said.
“So, when Hormuz effectively closed following the military strikes on Iran in late February 2026, the challenge that followed was: if the corridor is shut, who exactly is India supposed to buy from,” the Ministry said. “Within weeks, non-Hormuz crude sourcing was raised from 55% to 70% of India’s imports.” It added that, by June, for which official data is yet to be released, Russian supplies had risen further to around 2.6 million barrels per day, which it added was “more than half of that month’s overall imports”. “The May figure The Hindu cites is not a stand-alone data point; it is one frame inside a sequence that was deliberately engineered, month by month, as the Strait remained shut,” the Ministry said. Diplomatic outreach The response further went on to say that India’s diplomatic outreach to Qatar, the UAE and Saudi Arabia enabled it to secure alternate crude and LPG volumes. “And, through direct diplomatic engagement with the very country the crisis was centred on, 12 Indian LPG vessels sailed the Strait of Hormuz safely without paying any tolls or transit levies,” it added.
Diversified sourcing The government’s response also sought to dispel the notion that India was increasing its risk by concentrating supplies from a few countries, saying that India’s crude sourcing had widened from 27 countries a decade ago to 41+ countries by 2026. “Since the outbreak of war, India began sourcing crude from Iran, Chad, Algeria, Togo and Egypt, while substantially increasing imports from Venezuela (0.3% to 4.4%), Brazil (2.1% to 4.8%), Angola (2.0% to 4.2%), Oman (0.3% to 2.7%), Gabon and South Sudan,” it added. “Russian crude rose because it compensated for the sudden loss of West Asian supplies, ensuring that no single disruption jeopardised national energy security,” it said. The government went on to say that it had pre-empted exposure to sanctions through “ship-to-ship transfer operations in international waters” via the Red Sea route through Yanbu and Fujairah “precisely so that a single choke point, or a single sanctions regime, could not halt India-bound cargo”. Venezuela’s oil Regarding India’s sourcing of oil from Venezuela, the government said the relationship had been presented in the editorial as a “new, risky bet”.
The BriefWire