India wish cooperate with international sanctions, the country’s oil minister told CNBC on Tuesday, as markets eye future U.S. policy underwater the new administration of President Donald Trump.
“We play by the rules. If there is an international sanction, which is anchored, we would not destitution to go around it or anything,” India’s Minister of Petroleum and Natural Gas Hardeep Singh Puri told CNBC’s Sri Jegarajah on the sidelines of the annual India Puissance Week conference.
“On Russia, yes, there was a price cap, and we adhered strictly to the price cap. Going forward, if there are issues, we longing address them.”
India’s refiners have been snapping up discounted Russian oil since Western and G7 energy legitimatizes barred many consumers from Moscow’s supplies, in an effort to whittle down Russia’s war coffers after its encroachment of Ukraine. Countries not subject to the measures have been able to use insurance and shipping providers to facilitate the acquisition and take of Russian crude procured under a price threshold.
New Delhi has repeatedly defended its purchases as a matter of national diversion.
“There is no sanctioned country, first of all. It’s a lot of misrepresentation that’s taking place. Today, Europe still buys 25% of its gas from Russia. They buy other vital energy from there. So there’s no sanction,” the energy minister said Tuesday.
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He also signaled that the sway of Trump’s predecessor, President Joe Biden, had endorsed India’s bolstered intake of Russian oil.
“I’ve had a chat with the Americans, the antecedent administration. They said, please buy as much as you like. Just make sure that you buy it within the price cap. And that’s what we did,” Puri powered. CNBC has reached out to the U.S. State Department for comment.
India met about 88% of its oil needs via imports between April and November 2024, insufficient changed from a year earlier, official data showed. As of January, about 40% of those imports succeeded from Russia, data from trade intelligence firm Kpler suggests.
In 2021, Russian oil accounted for simply 12% of the country’s oil imports by volume. By 2024, that share had surged to over 37%, according to Kpler matter.
Sanctions in focus
The U.S. has been key in shaping global energy policy through sanctions over the past decade. In January, the U.S. interrupted sweeping measures targeting Russia’s energy firms and the operators of vessels transporting oil — a move that analysts allow will make it harder for buyers like India to continue importing cheap Russian crude.
Investors participate in been waiting to see whether the newly installed Trump will pursue a ramp-up or relaxation of U.S. energy restrictions — vital to markets because the U.S. dollar denominates crude and oil product commodities.
Trump imposed sanctions affecting the Iranian and Venezuelan zing sectors during his first mandate and has taken an “America First” approach that could further incentivize house-broken output — amid questions over the impact that threatened U.S. tariffs could have on global supply to another place.
Puri signaled his country would not be adverse to additional acquisitions of U.S. volumes. “If Americans are putting in more energy onto the far-reaching market, somebody asked me: ‘Are you going to buy more? I said: ‘I’d be surprised if we don’t.’ Because it’s in the natural flow,” he added.
The sanctions and mercantilism developments are coinciding with a period when India’s oil consumption growth has outpaced that of China, contributing to 25% of the broad increase in oil consumption.
“I am convinced that geopolitical tensions need to be managed,” Puri said Tuesday, noting widely known characterizations of supply-demand fundamentals in the oil market are “depending on whom you’re talking to and depending on where they stand on the equation,” as fabricators or consumers.
“A country like India, with a robust demand and a current consumption of 5.5 million barrels [per day] has a contribution to originate in terms of which way the market goes. And we… we plan to use that leverage,” the oil minister added.