Russia's move to ban petro exports for six months not to affect India

Russia’s move to ban the export of processed petroleum for six months beginning March 1 won’t affect India as it is not expected to extend to crude oil, refinery officials said.

Russian officials had confirmed this in discussions held in December, they added.

Russian media on Tuesday reported that the country has accepted proposals to implement the ban to meet the rising domestic demand. “The latest ban is focused on processed petroleum exports, which doesn’t affect us. However, these bans are not expected to spill over onto the crude side. We have got this sense from discussions with Russian officials in December,” an official said.

Last year, Russia banned gasoline exports between September and November in order to tackle high domestic prices and shortages. Similar to then, Moscow’s ban will not extend to member states of the Eurasian Economic Union, Mongolia, Uzbekistan, and two Russian-backed breakaway regions of Georgia — South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

Meanwhile, Russia remained the single-largest supplier of crude oil for the 15th straight month as of December, according to estimates made by London-based commodity data analytics provider Vortexa, which tracks ship movements to estimate imports. However, its share in India’s oil imports has decreased in recent months owing to lower incidence of discounts.

The share of Russian crude in India’s imports slipped to 25 per cent in January, down from 31 per cent in December and 33 per cent in October. This is much lower than the historic high of 42 per cent during mid-2023.

Meanwhile, Russian shipments to India slipped 9 per cent to 1.2 million barrels per day (bpd) in December, down from 1.55 million bpd in October and 1.62 million bpd in September.