New Delhi: India, the world's third largest oil consuming and importing nation, spent 112.5 billion euro (about Rs 1.5 lakh crore) on buying crude oil from Russia since the start of the Ukraine war, a European think tank said on Thursday.
The Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA) released a report on payments to Russia for fossil fuels since February 24, 2022.
"According to our estimates, since the beginning of the war, Russia earned EUR 835 billion in revenue from fossil fuel exports," it said.
China was the biggest buyer of Russian fossil fuel at EUR 235 billion (made up of EUR 170 billion for oil, EUR 34.3 billion for coal and EUR 30.5 billion for gas).
India, according to CREA, bought fossil fuels worth EUR 205.84 billion from Russia from the beginning of the war until March 2, 2025. This comprised EUR 112.5 billion (USD 121.59 billion) for purchase of crude oil, which is refined into fuels like petrol and diesel at refineries, and EUR 13.25 billion for coal.
India, which is more than 85 per cent dependent on imports to meet its crude oil needs, spent USD 232.7 billion on crude imports in 2022-23 (April 2022 to March 2023) and USD 234.3 billion in 2023-24. In the first 10 months of the current fiscal, it spent USD 195.2 billion.
India, which has traditionally sourced its oil from the Middle East, began importing a large volume of oil from Russia soon after the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. This is primarily because Russian oil was available at a significant discount to other international benchmarks due to Western sanctions and some European countries shunning purchases.
This led to India's imports of Russian oil seeing a dramatic rise, growing from less than 1 per cent of its total crude oil imports to a staggering 40 per cent in a short period.
Some of the refineries in India turned Russian crude oil into fuels like petrol and diesel which were exported to Europe and other G7 countries, according to CREA.
Latest sanctions by the US have, however, led to a fall in imports after India shunned cargoes in sanctioned ships or insuranced by banned entities.
Russia, however, continues to be India's top oil source. India imported 1.48 million barrels per day (bpd) of crude oil from Russia in February, against 1.67 million bpd in the previous month.
When Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, it triggered a series of sanctions from the United States, the European Union, and other Western nations, aimed at crippling Russia's economy. One of the main sanctions was on Russian oil exports, which significantly impacted Russia's ability to sell oil to European markets.
As a result, Russia began offering crude oil at heavily discounted prices in an attempt to find new buyers for its oil. India, with its large energy needs and an economy sensitive to oil price fluctuations, found this offer too attractive to ignore.
The price discount on Russian oil, sometimes as much as USD 18-20 per barrel lower than the market price of other oil, allowed India to procure oil at a much cheaper rate. The discounts have, however, shrunk in recent times to less than USD 3 a barrel.
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