The U.S., like the European Union, has banned imports of petroleum products from Russia. In February, however, they set a historic record for imports of Indian products, which are made mostly from Russian oil.
In February, shipments of refined products from India to the U.S. broke an all-time record. According to India’s Ministry of Commerce and Industry, 6.28 million barrels were shipped across the Atlantic and received $738 million for them. The previous record was set in July 2013 at 5.2 million barrels.
India not only set a new high for exports to the U.S., but also became the second-largest supplier of petroleum products after Canada, data from the U.S. Department of Energy’s (EIA) Office of Information said.
Indian imports to the U.S. have increased significantly since January, when a ban on Russian oil imports to Europe was already in effect, and India has managed to further increase its purchases of discounted crude.
Only the Netherlands buys more from India than the United States, which also no longer receives Russian products, but is a global hub for oil and petroleum products trade. The country’s companies transferred $1.4 billion in February shipments to India and received, for example, 7.1 million barrels of diesel fuel and 4.7 million barrels of jet fuel.
Israel also significantly increased its purchases of petroleum products in India. In February the local companies received 5.3 million barrels of diesel fuel, almost twice as much as in January, and paid $820 million for it.
Turkey, on the contrary, has sharply reduced its purchases from India since February, as it began to receive discounted European volumes from Russia. India’s diesel exports to Turkey more than tripled compared to January, dropping to nearly 700,000 barrels. As a result, payments fell to $82 million.
As EADaily reported, Indian companies earned additional billions of dollars on oil products from cheap Russian oil, which they sold to Western countries after the start of the SWO in Ukraine, but even before the EU ban on fuel imports from Russia. Cheap Russian oil and the desire of Western countries to reduce dependence on Russia allowed India to significantly increase alternative supplies to the Netherlands, France, Britain and the United States.
Between April 2022 and January 2023, the bulk of the growth in India’s purchases of petroleum products from Russian oil came from the Western countries of the Netherlands, the US, the UK and France. For example, all together they increased the purchase of jet fuel by 36% to 5.6 million tons, and diesel by 18%, to 4.5 million tons.
As a result, Indian companies’ revenues from exports of petroleum products to the four countries increased by $7 billion compared to the previous period.