Reliance Industries has resumed purchases of discounted Russian crude, sourcing barrels from non-sanctioned suppliers to feed its refinery at Jamnagar, Gujarat. Moreover, the country’s largest refiner also received a one-month concession from the US to take supplies from sanctioned entity Rosneft.
RIL had paused Russian purchases after the US sanctioned Rosneft PJSC and Lukoil PJSC on October 22 and gave refiners a month to wind down transactions with the two producers.
The company said the last purchase of sanctioned oil was loaded on November 12 to be delivered at a later date. Since November 22, RIL has received around 15 cargoes of Russian oil from Rosneft, according to trade flows data from Kpler.
A company source said that RIL is not using the window to procure more shipments from Rosneft. “We wanted more time to import what was contracted before sanctions came in,” he added, reminding that the final cargo was loaded on November 12. However, he declined to comment if the company is buying Russian crude from non-sanctioned entities.
RIL contracted Aframax tankers from RusExport and is routing flows to a 660,000-barrel-a-day plant that supplies domestic customers, Bloomberg reported. Its return to the market is likely to pare a decline in India’s purchases of Russian oil, which officials have said could more than halve this month.
The oil market is focused on the fate of Russian exports after Washington imposed sanctions on Moscow’s two top producers in a bid to curb the Kremlin’s funds for the war in Ukraine. That’s left Indian refiners to tap exports from non-sanctioned Russian entities — as well as costlier alternatives from elsewhere — though Russian flows were still expected to drop sharply.
Apart from the 660,000-barrel-a-day plant at Jamnagar that supplies the domestic market, Reliance also operates a 700,000-barrel-a-day unit there that’s focused on exports.
The export-oriented refinery last took a shipment of Russian crude on November 20, Reliance said last month. Since then, all Russian imports have flowed to its domestic sales-focused refinery.
Indian officials this month estimated that the nation’s oil imports from Russia would slump to about 800,000 barrels a day from an average 1.9 million barrels a day in November as refineries stopped taking the crude.