Kingdom Retracts As India Moves Ahead With Happy Oil Imports Elsewhere

India has seriously altered its route plan as it opts out of sourcing its oil imports from Saudi Arabia, cutting its demand by 36 percent in May this year. Even after the Kingdom changed its mind to alter its initial stance and offer help to India to meet its oil demands, India has stood its ground. 

Recently, the Centre signed up with South American oilfields to show that it serious about not adding on to the Middle Eastern monopoly for crude imports. 

As the leader of the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Nations (OPEC), Saudi Arabia agreed to the American suggestion of opening up output and making it affordable for other importing nations. But India seems to have moved on. 

In February, the US has accounted for 14percent of India’s crude oil imports while oil imports from Saudi Arabia have fallen miserably by 42 percent the same month. 

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State run refiners are known to have placed order to buy 9.5million barrels of Saudi oil in May, compared with the previously planned 10.8 million barrels, according to confirmed reports from the Reuters. 

India’s change dynamics has seen sourcing from Africa, Latin America in major percentage and a little bit from the US and other parts of Asia as well. It has been reducing its dependency on the Middle East from 63 in 2016 to 59 percent in 2020.

Things have been turning sour between India and the Kingdom as the latter tried to hit the Centre below the belt, by refusing to release production, asking India to use the stocks of crude it had bought cheap during the price slump in 2020.  The response was seen to be rude and indeed ‘undiplomatic’ and the Union Minister for Oil, Petroleum and Natural Gas, Dharmendra Pradhan did not mince his words when he said that, ‘Saudi advice remains unsolicited and that India knows where its best interest lies, and how to guard it too.’