- Sunday, March 02, 2025
By: Shubham Ghosh
Record imports of crude oil from Russia in the 2022-23 fiscal, when its war in Ukraine continued, helped India’s refiners increase exports of diesel and jet fuel to the European continent that avoided products of Russia, preliminary ship-tracking data from Kpler and Vortexa have shown, according to Reuters.
The report said access to cheap Russian crude improved output and profits at India’s refineries, helping them to export refined products to Europe competitively and claim a large market share.
Europe typically imported 154,000 barrels per day (bpd) of diesel and jet fuel on an average from India before Russian troops invaded Ukraine in February 2022.
It went up to 200,000 bpd after the European Union put a ban on import of oil products from Russia from February 5, Kpler data showed, according to Reuters.
India’s imports from Russia in March, on the other hand, went up for the seventh consecutive month to end out the fiscal year as the top supplier to the South Asian nation, replacing Iraq, according to the data.
Indian refiners that rarely bought Russian oil earlier due to high transport expenses, imported 970,000-981,000 bpd of it in 2022-23, which accounted for more than a fifth of overall imports at 4.5-4.6 million bpd, the Kpler and Vortexa data showed.
While Europe banned Russian products, India’s diesel exports to the continent soared 12-16 per cent to 150,000-167,000 bpd in the last fiscal year, the Kpler and Vortexa data showed.
That accounted for about 30 per cent of India’s total gasoil exports, up from 21-24 per cent a year earlier, according to the data.
The key European buyers of Indian diesel include: France, Turkey, Belgium and the Netherlands, according to the Kpler data.
