How India’s Russian Oil Buys Stabilise Global Markets And How The West Quietly Benefits
Standing beside his Russian counterpart Sergey Lavrov in Moscow, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar was unambiguous. “We are not the biggest purchasers of Russian oil, that is China,” he said, pushing back against what he described as a “perplexing” narrative from the West. Addressing media questions about US tariffs on Indian goods, Jaishankar defended India’s decision to import discounted crude from Russia as one driven by national interest, and more importantly, one that helped stabilise the global energy market. “We are a country where the Americans have said for the last few years that we should do everything to stabilise the world energy market, including buying oil from Russia,” Jaishankar stated, clearly suggesting that India was now being unfairly penalised for doing exactly what the West had informally endorsed. The comments come at a time when India finds itself at the centre of a geopolitical energy debate, triggered by Washington’s decision to double tariffs on Indian goods, now totalling 50 per cent, with an additional 25 per cent penalty imposed specifically over energy trade with Russia. The premise behind the penalty, that India is the “largest buyer” of Russian oil and thus fuelling Moscow’s war chest, has been repeatedly contested by New Delhi. Jaishankar, in Moscow,laid out the data: India is not the top importer of Russian oil (that would be China), not the biggest buyer of Russian LNG (that would be the EU), and not even the trade partner with the sharpest post-2022 surge in volume with Moscow.
Hydrocarbon hunt: India’s oil and gas churn is high risk, high return
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s announcement on Independence Day of Samudra Manthan, a mission to accelerate domestic oil and gas exploration, could not have come at a more pressing hour for India. Global geopolitical trends and trade turmoil have turned the spotlight on measures to moderate the outflow of dollars through our single largest drain: oil and gas imports. We ship in close to nine-tenths of the crude barrels we need, even as local sales of petroleum products are growing at a 6-7% annual clip. Home output of crude, which has been unable to keep pace, must rise sharply if we are to move the needle on self-reliance.
CBG, LNG to drive India’s gas sector growth in next five years, says IGL’s Sanjeev Bhatia
City gas companies see compressed biogas (CBG) and liquefied natural gas (LNG) as the next big growth drivers in India’s clean energy transition, with the two sectors expected to “flourish in the next five to ten years,” Indraprastha Gas Limited (IGL) Executive Director Sanjeev Bhatia said at the PHDCCI Global Summit on Sustainability 2025. Speaking at the session on hard-to-abate sectors, Bhatia said that while India’s natural gas share in the energy mix is targeted to rise from 6.5 per cent to 15 per cent by 2030, domestic production is not keeping pace with demand, making alternatives like CBG critical. “The government has already mandated city gas distributors to invest in compressed biogas plants. IGL has been tasked to set up at least 10 such facilities, with one plant at Narela in Delhi expected to begin operations by October. This unit will produce four tonnes of gas per day from municipal solid waste,” he said. On LNG, Bhatia underlined the massive potential in India’s transport sector, comparing India’s 700 LNG-fuelled trucks to China’s 0.6 million. “If we can even convert a fraction of diesel trucks to LNG, pollution can be cut by 30 per cent,” he said.