“President Trump’s energy agenda has resulted in oil and gas production reaching the highest levels ever recorded. To enable oil to keep flowing into the global market, the Treasury Department is issuing a temporary 30-day waiver to allow Indian refiners to purchase Russian oil,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on Thursday
New Delhi:The United States on Friday said it is ‘allowing our friends in India’ to take the Russian oil already on ships around southern Asia, refine it and move the stocks into the market quickly to ensure a flowing supply and ease pressure amid the West Asia conflict.
Earlier, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said that the US has issued a temporary 30-day waiver to allow Indian refiners to purchase Russian oil.
‘We have implemented short-term measures to help keep oil prices down. We are allowing our friends in India to take oil that is already on ships, refine it, and move those barrels into the market quickly. A practical way to get supply flowing and ease pressure,’ Energy Secretary Chris Wright said in a post on X.
In an interview with ABC News Live, Wright said that long-term oil supplies are ‘abundant’ and there are no worries regarding that, but in the short term, there is a need to get oil on the market.
“But as oil gets bid up a little bit because of those constraints coming out of the Strait of Hormuz, we’re taking a short-term action to say all this floating Russian oil storage that’s around southern Asia, it’s China just backed up, China does not treat their suppliers well, so there’s a bunch of floating barrels just sitting there.
“We’ve reached out to our friends in India and said, ‘Buy that oil. Bring it into your refineries’. That pulls stored oil immediately into Indian refineries and releases the pressure on other refineries around the world to buy oil that they’re no longer competing with the Indians for in that marketplace,” Wright said.
“So we have a number of measures like that that are short-term and temporary. This is no change in policy towards Russia. This is a very brief change in policy just to keep oil prices down a little bit better than we could otherwise,” he added.
Indian refiners have begun buying some of the over 15 million barrels of Russian crude currently floating on tankers near the country, as they move to offset supply concerns arising from disruptions in the Middle East.
Sources said refiners stepped up purchases after the US Treasury Department issued a 30-day licence allowing India to buy Russian oil cargoes currently stuck at sea.
India, which was among the top buyers of Russian oil, curtailed purchases after US pressured New Delhi to avoid buying Russian barrels in an effort to reduce money flowing to Moscow’s war effort in Ukraine.
India’s imports of Russian crude in February fell to 1.04 million barrels per day – the lowest since November 2022. The US had made cuts to tariffs on Indian goods contingent on New Delhi reducing its purchases of Russian crude.
This left several ship loads of Russian oil stranded on high-sea, sources said.
India, which had turned to buying discounted Russian crude following Western sanctions in February 2022, is now adjusting its purchases amid disruptions in Middle East supplies.
The country had previously imported record volumes of Russian oil when cargoes were available at deep discounts, helping refiners offset rising global crude prices. Russian cargoes hit a peak of 2.15 million barrels in May 2023.
However, with the widening West Asia conflict blocking shipments through the Strait of Hormuz and raising concerns over oil and LNG supplies from the Middle East, Indian refiners are now balancing purchases from both Russian cargoes at sea and other sources to ensure an uninterrupted domestic fuel supply.