Russia kept its number-one spot as the biggest crude oil supplier to India in July, despite U.S. pressure on India over its continued imports of Russian crude.
Amid difficult U.S.-India trade talks, the Trump Administration has singled out India to punish as a buyer of Russian crude. After weeks of threats, the U.S. hiked from August 27 the tariff on imports of Indian goods to a massive 50%, with 25% of this due to India’s Russian oil purchases.
The world’s third-largest crude oil importer, India, has significantly boosted Russian oil imports since 2022, when Russia’s oil was banned in the West. Russia currently accounts for about a third of India’s oil purchases, becoming the single largest crude supplier to India.
The latest government data for July shows that buyers remained unfazed by the U.S. pressure—and Russia provided 31.4% of all crude imports into India, local media reported on Monday.
The second-biggest oil supplier, Iraq, held a much lower share of Indian supply, at 17.1%, and the third-largest supplier, Saudi Arabia, held a 16.1% share of the Indian crude imports in July, according to the data.
The value of India’s crude oil imports from Russia was $3.6 billion, with Iraqi and Saudi sales at about $2 billion each, the figures showed.
U.S. officials have intensified pressure on India for its Russian oil imports.
“India’s dependence on Russian crude is opportunistic and deeply corrosive of the world’s efforts to isolate Putin’s war economy,” the White House trade adviser Peter Navarro wrote in an op-ed published in the Financial Times in the middle of August.
“India’s dependence on Russian crude is opportunistic and deeply corrosive of the world’s efforts to isolate Putin’s war economy,” Navarro wrote.
Russia and India, however, have talked up their strategic partnership with high-level meetings and visits since the U.S. tariff threat, and have reiterated their strategic alliance and cooperation in the energy sector—a sign that India isn’t giving up on Russia’s cheap crude.
By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com
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