India’s largest state-owned refiner, Indian Oil Corporation (IOC), has bought its first-ever crude from Ecuador as it seeks to replace part of its Russian crude deliveries with supplies from as far as South America.
IOC has purchased in a tender its first cargo from Ecuador – 2 million barrels of the medium-heavy sour Oriente crude, for delivery at the end of March, trade sources told Reuters on Wednesday.
The biggest state refiner in India and all other Indian firms are scouring the globe for favorably priced crude to replace the Russian supply they have lost following the U.S. sanctions on Russia’s top producers Rosneft and Lukoil.
IOC has pledged full compliance with the U.S. sanctions and has tapped the market to buy non-sanctioned Russian crude oil for delivery early this year.
In October, following the U.S. sanctions on Rosneft and Lukoil, IOC reportedly bought five cargoes of Russian crude from non-sanctioned entities for arrival in December.
Non-sanctioned Russian supply is not enough, apparently, to meet Indian Oil Corp’s needs, so the refiner is purchasing crude from as far as Ecuador.
In December, IOC bought its first crude from Colombia, as part of an optional supply deal with Colombia’s state oil firm Ecopetrol, trade sources told Reuters.
India is estimated to have imported $168 billion worth of Russian crude oil since Putin invaded Ukraine in February 2022.
But after U.S. sanctions and amid difficult trade negotiations with the Trump Administration, Indian refiners have turned to various producers in the Americas and West Africa to replace part of the Russian volumes.
India is also asking domestic refiners to provide timely and accurate data on a weekly basis of imports of Russian and U.S. crude, as New Delhi plans to show the data to the U.S. Administration as it seeks a trade deal, sources with knowledge of the efforts told Reuters earlier this month.
India has been trying to seal a trade deal with the United States for months, but the Trump Administration has singled out India as the key financier of Russia’s war spending as the buyer of large volumes of Russian crude oil.
By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com
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