Agencies
Washington, Oct 8
India, the world's third biggest oil importer and consumer, will continue to buy oil from any country that it has to, Oil Minister Hardeep
Singh Puri said asserting that no country has told New Delhi to stop buying oil from Russia.
India, which has not publicly condemned Moscow for its ‘special military action' in Ukraine, has become Russia's No.2 oil buyer after
China as Western buyers stopped trading with that country and its oil prices fell.
Puri, who is in Washington for talks with the US authorities on clean energy, said the government has a moral duty to provide energy at
affordable rates to consumers.
“India will buy oil from wherever it has to for the simple reason that this kind of a discussion cannot be taken to the consuming
population of India,” he told a group of Indian reporters here. “Have I been told by anyone to stop buying Russian oil? The answer is a
categorical ‘no'.”
He also expressed confidence that India would be able to mitigate a two million barrels per day cut in production by oil producers' cartel
OPEC and its allies, known as OPEC+.
“If you are clear about your policy, which means you believe in energy security and energy affordability, you will buy from wherever you
have to purchase energy from sources,” Puri said after his bilateral meeting with the US Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm.
With imports meeting 85 per cent of its oil needs, India has been diversifying its sources of oil purchases. Its refiners snapped up
discounted Russian oil that was shunned by some Western buyers over Moscow's Ukraine invasion in February.
From making up for just 0.2 per cent of all the oil imported, Russia now is India's second biggest oil supplier after Iraq, accounting for
about 18 per cent of all oil bought.
At one point Russian Urals crude was more than USD 30 a barrel cheaper than Brent crude (the global benchmark). By the end of
September, it was around USD 20 a barrel cheaper.
The Indian government, which has been defending its purchases from Russia on grounds that it has to source oil from where it is cheapest,
has so far not shown any inclination to join a plan by the G7 group of nations led by the US to cap the price of oil purchased from Russia as a
means of limiting Moscow's revenue.
On the production cut by OPEC+ which has reversed the downward trend in international oil prices, Puri said it was the sovereign right
of the producers to decide on the output.
“India is not a part of OPEC. India is at the receiving end of OPEC decisions,” he said in response to a question.
“I have always traditionally taken the view (that) it is their sovereign right to decide what they wish to do, how much oil they want to
produce and how much they want to put into the market. But I always say that all of this is subject to the doctrine of consequences
intended and unintended,” he said.
India, as one of the major consumers of oil and gas, also has a major say in the global oil market, he said.
“That's why I'm deliberately exercising not just calm, but also restraint in commenting on what has happened, because I'm told that
there were assurances given, don't ask me whom, etc., that in fact they were not planning to do this,” the minister said.
Puri said the oil producers had last year told India “that this (production adjustment) was a temporary adjustment and what you would
see is that by February, the amount of crude which is released into the market would be sufficient to cater to the increasing demand.”
“Obviously from March 2020, when the global economy was in a virtual lockdown state there has been a calibrated opening. But now most of the
economies are slowly firing on all cylinders, and therefore there's an increase in demand,” he said.
“But the fact of the matter is that large parts of the world today are either in recession or are experiencing conditions (like) recession,”
he said.
Observing that OPEC's decisions have been widely commented upon, both here and in other parts of the world, he said, “how much of
the proposed 2 million barrels which has been curtailed absorbs less production earlier and how much are going to be fresh cuts is
something that will be very carefully studied.”
“The market was already preparing to have a million barrels cut. So, the announcement of a
two-million-barrel cut has taken large parts of the world by some surprise and questions are
being asked because it stands to reason that if there is a large shortfall in the amounts of
energy which are released into the global market, then prices will escalate,” the minister said.
