‘India did world a favour’: Hardeep Singh Puri on India buying Russian oil

Union Petroleum and Natural Gas minister Hardeep Singh Puri said that India’s decision to buy oil from Russia amid global uncertainties helped prevent a potential spike in global oil prices.
In an interview with CNN’s Becky Anderson in Abu Dhabi, Union minister Puri explained that if the Indian government hadn’t bought Russian oil, global oil price would have gone up to 200 dollars for everyone. “Oil will remain a key part of the world’s energy supply for years to come”, he said.

He further told CNN, “Earlier I said I hope there will be a reduction in oil price. Today I’m more confident that there will be.”
“By 2026, when more energy is available in the market, As a student of the situation, I think that the likelihood of prices remaining stable and coming down are higher”, Puri said.
On being asked why India reduced oil imports from Russia in October by around 10 per cent, Puri explained that happened because of competitive oil rates in the market. “There are other people willing to supply at the same competitive rate because the OPEC position is they don’t deal with price. There’s healthy competition going on. If you don’t get it from one, you get it from someone else,” he said.

On being questioned whether the reduction in Russian oil imports was a strategic decision, the minister said, “These are oil decisions taken in the marketplace. When we face February 22 there was 13 million barrels of Russian oil on the market suddenly if that oil had gone off the market and India had decided to shift its 5 million barrels to say suppliers in the Gulf, price of oil would have gone up to 200 a barrel. So I think we did everybody a favour”.
Puri also took to his X account to share details. “India did the entire world a favour by buying Russian oil because if we had not done so, the global oil prices would have skyrocketed to USD 200/barrel. Russian oil was never under any sanctions and there was only a price cap, which Indian entities also followed.”
“Let us not forget that while some ill informed commentators talked about putting restrictions on India, many other European and Asian nations bought much more crude oil, diesel, LNG, rare earth minerals worth billions of dollars from Russia,” he wrote.
The union minister also noted in his X post, “We need to ensure steady availability, affordability and sustainability of energy for our 7 crore citizens who visit a petrol pump everyday. That’s our top priority.
Meanwhile, India is world’s third largest oil-consuming and importing nation, in July bought $ 2.8 billion worth of crude oil from Russia, according to a report by the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA) released in August.
According to the report, imports from Russia, which were less than one per cent of the total oil imported in the pre-Ukraine war period, now make up for almost 40 per cent of India’s total oil purchases.
(With inputs from agencies)