The spot supply of Russian oil has not changed from earlier, with barrels trading at a discount of $2-$3 per barrel to Dubai for delivery at Indian ports, said Anuj Jain, head of finance at Indian Oil Corp, the country’s top refiner.
As Europe and the US have shunned Russian oil over Moscow’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, India has taken advantage of discounts on Russian output to become the largest buyer of Russian seaborne crude.
Washington has pressured India to stop buying Russian oil, imposing hefty tariffs on Indian exports to the US as punishment, but Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government has said it will continue buying Moscow’s crude as it is economical.
State-run IOC buys Russian oil from traders on a delivered basis.
Loading of Russian oil for India in August nearly halved to 686,850 barrels per day from about 1.34 million bpd in July, according to LSEG trade flows.
August loading of Russian oil for Indian was low as state refiners paused purchases when discounts narrowed.
“We never stopped it (buying Russian crude). We are already buying for October, November,” Jain told Reuters on the sidelines of the APPEC conference in Singapore.
He, said IOC had to reduce imports of Russian oil as its inventories were high.
“There was a dip in buy because our inventory levels were high, so we wanted to optimise our inventory levels also. That was one of major factors,” Jain said in Hindi.
