India's oil imports and the Russian-crude question

The dependence that frames everything

India is structurally short of oil. The country imports about 88% of the crude it consumes — 88.2% over April 2024 to February 2025 on Petroleum Planning and Analysis Cell (PPAC) data, edging higher in the following fiscal year, as reported by OilPrice citing oil-ministry figures. Domestic output has been flat while demand keeps rising; India overtook China as the largest single driver of global oil-demand growth in 2024 (OilPrice). That dependence is the fixed backdrop to every sourcing decision the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas makes: the question is never whether to import, but from where and at what price. The national storage cushion is thin — the strategic reserve holds about 5.33 million tonnes across three underground sites, roughly 9.5 days of crude cover, per the Press Information Bureau — so security of supply rests on diversified sourcing rather than stockpiles.

The Russian-crude turn

Before 2022, Russia was a marginal supplier to India. After the invasion of Ukraine and the Western price cap, Russia offered its Urals grade at a steep discount to Gulf benchmarks, and Indian refiners bought heavily. On Kpler ship-tracking data reported by ThePrint, Russian crude has made up roughly a third of India’s total oil imports consistently since January 2024 — the single largest source, displacing volumes that previously came from Iraq and Saudi Arabia. The government’s stated rationale, articulated repeatedly by the oil ministry and the Ministry of External Affairs, is that cheaper crude shielded Indian consumers from price spikes and helped contain inflation, and that a country of 1.4 billion cannot subordinate energy security to geopolitics (Al Jazeera; The Moscow Times, reporting official statements). The counter-position, which is the stated rationale of the Western sanctions themselves, is that these purchases give Moscow a resilient oil-revenue stream that blunts the sanctions regime (Atlantic Council; Carnegie Endowment).

Three pressures on the Russian channel

The Russian channel has come under three distinct pressures, which this brief tracks separately because they move on different clocks.

Sanctions. On 21 November 2025, US sanctions on Rosneft and Lukoil — the two companies behind the bulk of India’s Russian purchases — reached their wind-down deadline and took effect (Atlantic Council; Carnegie Endowment). Analysts had expected a sharp drop in Indian flows as refiners paused direct dealings; on the reporting to date, importers instead pivoted toward non-sanctioned intermediaries and trading channels rather than exiting Russian crude (Carnegie Endowment).

Trade leverage. Through 2025 the United States applied an additional tariff on Indian goods tied to India’s Russian-oil purchases. The US-India trade framework announced in February 2026 removed that additional 25% tariff; the White House fact sheet framed the removal as recognition of India’s commitment to stop purchasing Russian oil, while India did not publicly confirm any such commitment (The White House; The Moscow Times). The tariff-and-oil linkage is the seam where this energy question meets India’s broader trade strategy and the Ministry of Commerce.

Supply shock. A disruption to shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, tied to the war with Iran, reduced flows from Gulf suppliers into 2026 (CNBC; Al Jazeera). Because a large share of India’s crude normally transits Hormuz, the shock pushed refiners back toward Russian barrels arriving by other routes. In March 2026 the United States offered India a 30-day waiver to keep buying Russian oil to ease the resulting supply worries (CNBC).

Where the Russian channel stood at mid-2026

The pressures have not reversed the dependence — they have deepened the Russian share. Ship-tracking data reported by Reuters and summarised by Al Jazeera and Outlook India showed India’s Russian crude imports hitting a record high in June 2026, with Russia supplying roughly half of India’s crude and the US sanctions waiver having lapsed around mid-June without renewal (Al Jazeera; Outlook India). India’s position through this has been consistent and public: officials have said India continues to buy Russian oil, prioritising energy security and commercial terms, and does not treat any external waiver as permission it requires (The Moscow Times; Al Jazeera). A separate strand concerns Nayara Energy, the Gujarat refinery part-owned by Rosneft, which the EU sanctioned in July 2025 and which now runs largely on Russian crude; the current oil minister has said Indian companies do not sell fuel directly to Russia while acknowledging Indian-origin fuel could reach Russia via international traders (Al Jazeera). The through-line is that India’s oil sourcing has become a live test of its strategic autonomy: the state is balancing sanctions exposure, trade concessions and supply shocks against an 88%-import structure it has not been able to change quickly.

Where it stands as of 7 October 2026

The supply shock has not eased. The Reserve Bank’s Monetary Policy Committee, raising the repo rate by 25 basis points to 5.50 per cent on 7 October 2026, said that since its August meeting “the re-escalation of the conflict in West Asia and the consequent sharp volatility in crude oil prices has kept the global economy in a state of flux”, that a resolution “remaining elusive” left significant downside risks, and that the adverse impact of energy prices on India “is being contained with active diversification of supply sources” (RBI). The oil minister, speaking on 1 October, said international price spikes of 70-80 per cent had been kept off domestic pump prices by central excise duty cuts on petrol and diesel, and that essential gas supplies were maintained through the West Asia crisis (PIB, 1 Oct 2026).

The cost of that insulation is visible in cooking gas. The ministry put the implicit subsidy on a 14.2 kg domestic LPG cylinder at about ₹721 in June 2026 and ₹210 in September; despite ₹30,000 crore of government compensation for FY2025-26 and FY2026-27, the public-sector oil companies’ accumulated under-recoveries on domestic LPG exceeded ₹62,000 crore at 31 August 2026, and from 1 October subsidised refills require biometric Aadhaar authentication (PIB, LPG).

The policy response has run on the domestic-supply side of the ledger. On 31 July 2026 the Cabinet approved “Samudra Manthan”, a ₹84,084 crore National Offshore Exploration Scheme to FY2030-31 for seismic surveys, deepwater and ultra-deepwater drilling and shared offshore infrastructure, with a stated expectation of over 600 million tonnes of oil-equivalent in reserve accretion (PIB, Samudra Manthan); the first of four deepwater appraisal wells in the Mahanadi basin had been spudded on 25 July (PIB, Mahanadi). On 6 August a ₹23,731 crore compressed-biogas scheme, GOBARdhan, was approved; the government framed it as “reducing dependence on imported fossil fuels” (PIB, GOBARdhan). On the diplomatic side, the 7th OPEC-India Energy Dialogue met in New Delhi on 22 September (PIB, OPEC), and on 30 September the ministry released a draft Petroleum (Amendment) Bill, 2026 for consultation until 30 October (PIB, draft bill).

What IndiaStand has not verified for this update is the monthly source mix after June 2026 — in particular whether the record Russian share persisted through the re-escalation. That figure comes from ship-tracking data rather than official release, and it is not restated here without a current source.

Who owns this topic (and why we’re here)

Search and AI-answer space for “India Russian oil,” “India crude imports” and “India energy security” is split between fast-dating news wraps (that fix a single month’s import figure and then age) and exam-prep explainers (Drishti IAS, ClearIAS, InsightsonIndia, BYJU’S) that give the static definitions — import dependence, the strategic reserve, the list of state oil companies — without tracking the moving contest. This maintained brief does both: it anchors the durable structure (PPAC dependence figures, PIB reserve data, the ministry’s mandate) to a structured dossier on the institution, and separates the three live pressures on the Russian channel — sanctions, trade leverage, supply shock — attributing each claim and each government position to its source, and updating as the sanctions, the trade framework and the monthly import data move.

Maintained topic brief. Analysis by IndiaStand — it characterises the state of play and the range of positions actually held, attributes each claim, and makes no forecast and no recommendation.