The Financial Express
Russia’s biggest oil producer Rosneft Oil Company has signed a term agreement with state-run Indian Oil (IOC) to increase oil supplies and diversify grades. “The parties also discussed ways of expanding integrated cooperation between Rosneft Oil Company and Indian companies in the entire value chain of the energy sector, including possibilities of making payments in national currencies,” Roneft said in a statement.
The development is in sync with the increased purchases of Russian oil by India since the Russia-Ukraine war broke out, which led to much reduced exports of oil to conventional western buyers. In November last year, Russia became India’s largest crude supplier, thanks to discounted prices on offer, up from its 2.2% share in India’s crude basket in 2021.
“The trends that we saw in Asia in 2022 are likely to continue this year, with China and India importing large volumes of crude from Russia, while South Korea has cut back buying from the same supplier substantially and Japan not importing from that country,” said Lim Jit Yang, adviser for Asia-Pacific oil markets at S&P Global Commodity Insights wrote recently.
The Roneft-IOC agreement was signed here in the presence of oil minister Hardeep Singh Puri, between Rosneft’s CEO Igor Sechin and IOC chairman Shrikant Madhav Vaidya.
During his India visit, Sechin also met with officials from the Indian government and with the heads of some of the country’s largest oil and gas companies. “Particular attention was paid to the ongoing implementation of joint projects between Rosneft and its Indian partners, including Sakhalin-1, Taas-Yuryakh and Vankorneft,” a Rosneft statement said.
According to the latest statistics from the ministry of commerce & industry, Russia, for the first time in history, has become one of India’s five largest trading partners — the volume of trade between the countries in 2022 reached $38.4 billion. “Thus, the goal set by the leaders of our countries to increase turnover to $30 billion by 2025 has been achieved in advance,” said Sechin.
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