India did everybody a favour by buying oil from Russia during global uncertainties and helped prevent a potential surge in global crude prices, Union minister Hardeep Singh Puri told CNN in a recent interview.
The petroleum and natural gas minister said that had India not purchased discounted crude from Russia, the global oil prices would have shot up to $200 (per barrel) for everyone.
He was speaking to CNN's Becky Anderson on the sidelines of an annual energy event in UAE's Abu Dhabi.
"Earlier I said I hope there will be a reduction in oil price. Today I'm more confident that there will be," he said.
Puri added: "When more and more oil is coming into the market, nobody can contain anything in the world. If you can circumscribe and bring some calm into the areas of conflict ... a faster transition will take place ... more and more biofuel blending taking place, more compressed biogas, more natural gas. 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."
When 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 whether the reduction in Russian oil imports was a strategic decision, Puri said such decisions are taken in the marketplace. "When we face February 22 [When Russia invaded Ukraine] 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".
Later, Puri also shared a clip from the interview on his X handle.
In the clip, the Union minister explained that the Russian oil was never under any sanctions from the West and there was only a price cap, which Indian entities also followed.
"The term [sanctions] is very loosely used ... Russia is selling $14 dollar of critical minerals to EU, they are selling oil to Japan," he said.
The minister said that while some "ill informed commentators" spoke about imposing restrictions on India, many European and Asian nations bought much more crude oil, diesel, LNG, rare earth minerals worth billions of dollars from Russia.
He wrote on X that India will continue to buy energy from whoever offers the best rates to its oil companies.
"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. India is the only major consumer where fuel prices has come down significantly in the last 3 years despite unprecedented global price increases in other nations," he said.
In September, during his visit to US, Puri asserted that India is prepared to keep buying oil from Russian companies that are allowed to make such sales since prices are cheap.
India's crude oil imports from Russia rose by 11.7% to about 1.9 million barrels per day (bpd) in September, accounting for about two-fifths of the South Asian nation's overall crude imports in the month, Reuters reported earlier, citing tanker data obtained from industry sources.
Crude from the Commonwealth of Independent States, comprising Russia, Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan, accounted for about 43% of India's overall imports, up from 38.5% in August, the data showed.
India, the world's third largest oil importer and consumer, has emerged as the top buyer of discounted Russian seaborne oil after Western nations stopped buying from Moscow following its invasion of Ukraine.
(With inputs from agencies)
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