(Bloomberg) --
Indian refiners reduced oil imports from Russia as discounts on cargoes weren't attractive, according to Oil Minister Hardeep Singh Puri, who dismissed the notion flows dropped because of payment-related challenges.
“There is no payment problem,” Puri said at a briefing in New Delhi on Wednesday, without mentioning a price cap on cargoes imposed by the Group of Seven that's designed to punish Russia for the war in Ukraine. “It is a pure function of price at which our refiners will buy,” Puri said.
India is one of Asia's biggest crude importers, and has emerged as a huge buyer of Russian cargoes following Moscow's invasion, with refiners taking shipments shunned by processors in Europe and the US. New Delhi has said that such a stance makes sense given its huge energy requirements.
Still, imports of oil from Moscow collpased last month to the lowest level since January 2023 as six tankers carrying Sokol grade oil from Russia's Far East could not deliver due to payment issues amid tightening sanctions, according to data-intelligence company Kpler. In December, a senior US Treasury official said Washington would ramp up enforcement of the $60-a-barrel cap.
“India's leadership has only one requirement: that the Indian consumer gets the energy at the most economical price, without disruption,” Puri said. The country needs 5 million barrels of oil a day, of which 1.5 million has been coming from Russia, and that underlines there are no payment issues, he said.
Separately, Puri said that there has been no disruption to the nation's crude supplies due to recent drone attacks on commercial vessels in the Red Sea. The third-largest oil consumer has a “buyer's position” in the market, and seeks to leverage that to get better deals, he said.
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