Where India's Barrels Came From
Published 4 October 2026
India imports most of the crude it burns, and a large share of it used to come through the Strait of Hormuz. When the strait closed in practice, if not in law, the question for Indian refiners was simple and ugly: where do the barrels come from now? The answer changed month by month, and the best way to tell it is in the monthly import figures, each with its own date and source.
March: Russia fills the hole
Reuters, using trade data, reported on 21 April that India's March crude imports were 4.5 million barrels a day, down 13 percent from February. Russian imports were 2.25 million barrels a day, almost double February and a record 50 percent of the basket. Middle Eastern shipments fell 61 percent to 1.18 million barrels a day, 26.3 percent of imports and reportedly the lowest share ever. OPEC's share fell to 29 percent, also reported as a record low.
The Russian surge had a policy underpinning. On 5 March, Reuters reported that Washington had granted India a 30-day waiver to buy Russian oil already stranded at sea. Six sources described the purchases, and one of them put state refiners' buying at 20 million barrels, a number that stays attributed to that one source. Three sources described delivered Urals at a premium of $4 to $5 a barrel over Brent for cargoes arriving in March and early April. Replacement oil was not cheap oil, and one trader's quote is not a national average.
April: the Iranian cargoes
On 4 April, Reuters quoted the petroleum ministry saying India's requirements were secured, including Iranian purchases, with no payment hurdle. India was sourcing from more than 40 countries, and a 44,000-tonne Iranian LPG cargo was discharging at Mangalore. Those are official assurances, and they do not prove that no refinery anywhere faced a disruption.
Nine days later, ship-tracking data showed the first Iranian crude arriving in India in seven years, since May 2019. The tankers Felicity, at Sikka, and Jaya, at an Odisha port, were the first two. Indian Oil had bought the Jaya cargo, and Reliance was permitted to buy cargoes on several named vessels. A typical supertanker holds two million barrels, but the report did not give the quantity actually discharged, and multiplying nominal capacity into a delivered total would be inventing a figure.
September: the Gulf comes back
The most recent detailed account, Financial Express on 1 October, quoting Kpler, puts September imports at 5.32 million barrels a day. Named West Asian suppliers were 2.10 million barrels a day, or 39.5 percent, up 74 percent from August's 1.21 million (26 percent). February's pre-war figure was 3.10 million, 59.1 percent. Another 0.646 million barrels a day arrived with an unknown origin, and those should not automatically be called Gulf oil.
Russian crude fell to 1.88 million barrels a day, 35.3 percent of the basket, from 2.09 in August and 2.83 in July. Among the named Gulf suppliers, Iraq led at 0.538 million, with Saudi Arabia at 0.529, the UAE at 0.449 (down about 18 percent from August), Kuwait at 0.344, and Oman and Qatar at 0.136 and 0.107.
A contradiction belongs in the record. BusinessLine on 28 September, also quoting Kpler, estimated month-to-date imports of about 5.3 million barrels a day, Russian arrivals of 1.75 and Middle Eastern supply of around 3, broadly back to pre-war. The 1 October article separates named from unknown origins and updates the Russian figure. Sampling dates and regional classifications may explain part of the gap. This file does not average the two.
The rupees
On 27 March the government cut the special additional excise duty by Rs 10 a litre on petrol and diesel: petrol's component from Rs 13 to Rs 3 and diesel's from Rs 10 to nil. That is one component of the central taxes and not all of them. The government said pump prices would not change, so the relief went to the oil marketing companies' under-recoveries and not to drivers.
It paired that with export levies. At the 27 March inter-ministerial briefing, diesel exports carried Rs 21.50 a litre, jet fuel Rs 29.50, and petrol none, all under fortnightly review. Those were March rates and must not be read as October's. The latest reported change, effective 1 October, lowers the diesel export levy to Rs 16 a litre from Rs 20 and jet fuel to Rs 10.5 from Rs 15, with petrol unchanged at Rs 0.5. A reproduction of the notification (52/2026-Central Excise, 30 September) is consistent with that, though it is not an original gazette copy. These are export levies, not pump taxes.
The central board's chairman put a conditional price on the March policy: Rs 7,000 crore of gross revenue lost per fortnight, of which Rs 1,500 crore was recovered through export taxes, a net Rs 5,500 crore. That was an estimate at March rates and volumes, not audited spending to date.
Get the next file
One email when a new file is published. No paid service needed.