India's crude oil imports from the United States in the first half of 2025 exceeded 7 million tons, surging more than 300% year-on-year. This demonstrates India's "crude oil diversification" strategy. Petroleum imported from the United States accounts for 7% of India's total crude oil imports. Although not the largest supplier, it is also to meet the U.S. crude oil exports. In addition, India is a major buyer of Russian oil. In 2024, India imported $49 billion worth of Russian crude oil throughout the year.
Traditionally, India has imported oil from the Middle East. However, shortly after the Russia-Ukraine conflict, India began importing large amounts of oil from Russia and continued doing so, mainly because the price was low, much lower than buying oil from the Middle East, and the supply was abundant!
India mainly imports oil from Russia and the United States, thus silencing the Americans: I have bought your oil, so you can't talk about oil anymore. While our country mainly imports oil from Russia, Iran, the United States, Saudi Arabia, and Middle Eastern countries, as well as Africa. In short, we import oil from so many countries, about twenty or thirty. They are supplying oil to China, which is a procurement diversification.
In other words, no one dares to greatly increase the price of oil for China, because if they do, then sorry, we will stop purchasing. There are so many countries supplying oil to China, we don't need just one. This is a fact, the more suppliers we have, the more say we have. After all, everyone is afraid of offending China, because once they offend China, they won't buy your oil anymore, and the economic loss would be huge.
Because oil is a commodity, if you don't sell it, you have to store it every day after production, which increases storage costs. The best outcome is to produce it and sell it immediately, without storing or keeping it in vaults, just putting it directly into barrels and selling it, which is convenient, quick, and cost-effective, with high profits.
The biggest weakness of India is that it rarely imports oil from Middle Eastern countries. Because India has tied itself to Israel's war chariot, willing to offend all Middle Eastern countries for the sake of Israel. Including Iran, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Iraq, etc., and buys very little oil. So, since you buy little oil, our relationship with you is just so-so.
Therefore, India has no influence in Middle Eastern countries. In addition, India has always been bullying Pakistan, and there are inherent conflicts with Middle Eastern countries. This is a fact. India wants to purchase oil from the United States to reduce the trade surplus, but the United States may not let India off easily.
Original article: https://www.toutiao.com/article/1836517897526424/
Statement: This article represents the views of the author.