Russian President Vladimir Putin and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in a 2014 meeting.
Russia is awash with cash – thanks, in part, to its “friendly customer” India which has been spending huge amounts to buy their crude oil over the past year.
According to CREA reports, India spent $37 billion to buy crude oil from Russia last year, up 13 times from what they purchased before the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
India has become one of the largest customers of Russia during this period. After receiving sanctions from the West, Moscow quickly launched strong price reductions for oil products for the countries they called “friendly” such as China and India.
These two top oil-consuming countries quickly replaced Russia’s Western partners. According to information from Russia, China currently accounts for about 45-50% of Russia’s crude oil export market share, while India also accounts for 40%. In terms of India, oil from Russia also accounts for 35% of their total imports, according to data from S&P Global.
India, one of the largest oil refiners in the world, regularly refines Russian oil before reselling it to Western countries. For example, from December 2022 to the end of 2023, the most populous country in the world exported about $1.3 billion of products from oil originating from Russia to the US.
In addition, about $9.1 billion of products sourced from Russian crude oil are indirectly purchased by countries participating in the sanctions against Russia.
However, India is facing even more pressure from trade sanctions from the West. This is also one of the reasons why India’s oil imports from Russia fell to the lowest level in a year in January.
There have also been signs that many Russian oil-carrying ships have had to leave India before being able to unload cargo from late last year to early this year.
