'That way you're not hostage just to US sort of exports to India.'
There is no payment problem for Russian crude, Petroleum and Natural Gas Minister Hardeep Singh Puri said on Wednesday. He said there is no proposal to cut retail fuel prices at the moment. Addressing a press conference, the minister said India enjoys a buyers' position and foreign suppliers are approaching Indian companies with offers to sell oil.
India's unabated tryst with Russian crude oil is slowly coming to an end. The time has come for Indian refiners to navigate, creatively, the choppy waters of the post-honeymoon period, and for Indian policymakers to take cognisance of the broader impact on India from the spillover of the Russian crisis - after Washington's warning to transgressors last week. Shipments from Russia to India have averaged over 1.8 million barrels a day since February, according to data from Paris-based market analytics firm Kpler. But much of the crude shipped to India was non-sanctioned because it traded below a price cap set by the US led G-7 nations in December.
Crude and gas supply concerns have eased amid reports that Israel and Hamas have struck a peace deal. The International Energy Agency estimates oil demand may drop slightly in calendar 24 but Opec probably has enough pricing power to maintain $80/ barrel Brent prices. Russia's share of India's crude imports remained strong at about 35 per cent in September 2023.
A few years ago, when top officials of Indian state-run refiners went to Dubai to negotiate a crude oil supply contract, a senior official from state-owned Saudi Aramco told them, "We can negotiate on anything, but I am the last man standing for you. "Nobody can offer the range of crudes we do with certainty," an official who was part of the negotiating team recalls. Perhaps that explains why Saudi Arabia is less concerned about losing its place as India's premier oil supplier to an upstart like Russia, which emerged from nowhere to become India's biggest crude oil supplier in September and October.
The new strategy is being planned to guard against disruption in supplies from its biggest sources in West Asia -- Iraq and Syria -- as they are caught in problems relating to Islamic State movement.
Foreign portfolio investors (FPIs) have net sold domestic shares worth over $10 billion so far this month amid a shift to China, which not only offers attractive valuations compared to India but has also announced several measures to support the economy and the stock market in recent weeks. If the trend doesn't reverse, this will be the first time that overseas funds will yank out more than $10 billion from Indian equity markets in a month.
Ongoing strategic investment into assets abroad, alongside gas purchases being made by India, will soon allow the country to access as much gas as it needs, Petroleum and Natural Gas Minister Hardeep Singh Puri said on the sidelines of India Energy Week (IEW 2025).
If attendance is any yardstick, the Jeddah meet was a resounding success
After HPCL, the government headhunter struggled to find a suitable candidate for the top job at Bharat Petroleum, as most applicants were narrow specialists lacking multidisciplinary experience needed to run a large organisation. The Public Enterprise Selection Board (PESB) last month interviewed a dozen candidates including BPCL director (finance) Vetsa Ramakrishna Gupta and its director (refineries) S Khanna but found none suitable for the job of chairman and managing director of Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd (BPCL), according to a PESB order.
State-owned Indian Oil Corporation has begun stockpiling 15 days' supply of domestic cooking gas to meet contingencies like disruption in crude oil supplies in the event of war in Iraq.\n\n\n\n
'Trump is good news for us. Energy poverty is real, and fossil fuels are the answer.'
Qwik Supply, the third largest donor to political parities using electoral bonds, bought Rs 410 crore bonds between 2021-22 and 2023-24, and gave all but Rs 25 crore to the BJP.
India imported 13.2 million tonnes of crude oil from Nigeira in 2009-10.
The government has slashed allocation of natural gas used for LPG production, and diverted the low-priced fuel to city gas retailers like Indraprastha Gas Ltd and Adani-Total Gas Ltd to meet a part of their requirement for CNG/piped cooking gas supplies, according an official order. The government had in October and November last year cut supplies of low-priced natural gas coming from old fields such as Mumbai High and Bassein fields in the Bay of Bengal, to city gas retailers by as much as 40 per cent in view of limited output.
India's trade account could come under pressure and there could be an inflation push if crude oil prices remain above the $90 per barrel (Brent) for a prolonged period since India imports over 85 per cent of its oil and roughly 50 per cent of its gas. A rebound in economic activity is bound to lead to higher fuel demand. While India is the third-largest importer of crude, it is a net exporter of refined products, which helps to compensate to some degree.
'The real repo rate is very high in terms of core inflation.'
Rising prices of cereals and concerns over rice production in the 2023-2024 crop year due to insufficient rains followed by floods could be the possible causes.
The RBI on Wednesday slashed key interest rate by 25 basis points, for the second time in a row, to support a shuttering economy hit by reciprocal tariffs imposed by the US. Following the rate cut, the key policy rate eased to 6 per cent providing relief to home, auto and corporate loan borrowers.
Russia has defaulted on the supply of at least 5 cargoes or shiploads of LNG to India after its retaliatory sanctions hit one of the companies that supply gas to India, sources said. India's largest gas firm GAIL has a long-term deal to import 2.85 million tonnes of liquefied natural gas (LNG) per annum from a Singapore-based unit of Russian gas producer Gazprom. The company has since June defaulted on the supply of 5 cargoes of LNG under that contract citing difficulty in sourcing gas due to sanctions, two sources briefed on the matter said.
The government will formulate a strategy to make India self-reliant in edible oils by boosting domestic output of oilseeds and launch a comprehensive programme to support dairy farmers, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced on Thursday. India imports a large quantity of edible oils to meet the domestic demand. During the 2022-23 marketing year (November-October), the country imported nearly 165 lakh tonnes of cooking oils, valuing a whopping Rs 1.38 lakh crore.
Among the Sensex firms, Power Grid, ITC, JSW Steel, ICICI Bank, Tech Mahindra, Infosys, IndusInd Bank and Mahindra & Mahindra were the major laggards. Sun Pharma, Reliance Industries, HCL Tech, Hindustan Unilever, Bajaj Finance and Maruti were among the gainers.
Indian Oil Corporation (IOC), the nation's largest oil firm, has renewed a deal to buy up to 2 million tonnes of crude oil in 2022 from Russia's Rosneft, the Russian oil producer said. IOC had in February 2020 signed a deal with Rosneft Oil Company to import up to 2 million tonnes of oil via the port of Novorossiysk. In 2021, the deal envisaged supply of up to 1.7 million tonnes of crude oil but IOC bought just on parcel or shipload as the cost of transporting the oil made it uneconomical, when compared to alternatives. For 2022, the deal is for the supply of up to 2 million tonnes of oil from the Black Sea port of Novorossiysk.
The Reserve Bank on Wednesday lowered the inflation projection for the current fiscal to 4 per cent from 4.2 per cent earlier, taking into account good agricultural output and falling crude prices.
'We are not incentivising the old tax scheme. These taxpayers will also shift to the new regime after comparison.'
IOC and other oil PSUs, Bharat Petroleum and Hindustan Petroleum are losing Rs 48 crore per day on sale of petrol, whose pricing was decontrolled by the government in June 2010.
Gazprom, Russia's gas monopoly, on Tuesday predicted oil prices would reach $250 a barrel in 2009. The prediction came as the developed world's energy watchdog warned that record high oil prices were needed to choke off demand in order to balance the oil market.
From the 30-share blue-chip pack, IndusInd Bank, NTPC, UltraTech Cement, Sun Pharma, Axis Bank, State Bank of India, Tata Steel, Power Grid, Adani Ports and Kotak Mahindra Bank were among the major laggards. Tata Consultancy Services jumped nearly 6 per cent after the IT services company reported an 11.95 per cent jump in the December quarter net profit to Rs 12,380 crore. Tech Mahindra, HCL Tech, Infosys and Bajaj Finserv were the other big gainers.
India's imports of crude oil from Russia touched a new high of 1.64 million barrels per day in March and is now double of the purchases from Iraq - the nation's traditional top oil supplier. But the purchases appear to have plateaued as growth has slowed. Russia continued to be the single largest supplier of crude oil, which is converted into petrol and diesel at refineries, for a sixth straight month by supplying more than one-third of all oil India imported, according to energy cargo tracker Vortexa.
The prospect of protracted uncertainties in the global economic landscape not only pose a risk for India's growth outlook in 2025-26, but are also likely to dent the private sector's capital raising and investment plans, the finance ministry averred on Tuesday, cautioning the country's corporates that the era of 'easy pickings' was over.
Goldman Sachs expects gold to reach $3,150 per ounce in the international market by December 2025, up around 19.1 per cent from its current level of $2,645, according to a recent report in Business Standard. Domestically, gold is trading at Rs 76,018 per 10 grams after delivering a remarkable 21.9 per cent return in the past year.
While consumers have enjoyed lower fuel prices, producers have cut spending and thousands of jobs
With crude oil flirting with the $100 a barrel mark, world's largest oil producer Saudi Arabia is emulating marketing savvy West to showcase oil cartel Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries in a new light when it organises the third OPEC Summit in Riyadh this week.
Global financial markets are wrong in hoping that the worst is over in geopolitical crises such as the Iran-Israel conflict and the Russia-Ukraine war, wrote Christopher Wood, global head of equity strategy at Jefferies, in a recent note to investors called 'GREED & fear'. While most investors and the media are focused on United States (US) Federal Reserve policy and the "endless chatter" of Fed governors, Wood believes the news flow in the financial sphere "pales into complete insignificance" compared with the "tectonic shifts" going on in geopolitics.
Russia on Thursday said it was not bothered at a possible price cap on its crude oil proposed by the West, saying Moscow will negotiate directly with its partners like India and China as the price should be decided between the producers and consumers, and "not someone who just decided to punish someone." Members of the G7 have agreed to impose a price cap on Russian oil in a bid to hit Moscow's ability to finance the war in Ukraine. Countries want to reach an agreement ahead of December 5, when Europe's embargo on Russian crude travelling by sea takes effect.
India's import of cheap Russian oil scaled another record in May and is now more than the combined oil bought from Saudi Arabia, Iraq, UAE and the US, industry data showed. India took 1.96 million barrels a day from Russia in May, 15 per cent more than the previous high in April, according to data from energy cargo tracker Vortexa. Russia now makes up for nearly 42 per cent of all crude oil India imported in May.
The Oil prices have surged and surpassed $85 per barrel after several oil producer countries announced surprise cuts in production, TASS Agency reported. According to the Russian News Agency, this is the first time since March 7 that the price of futures contracts of Brent crude oil surged. The price of futures contracts of Brent crude oil for June 2023 delivery on London's ICE surpassed $85 per barrel.
India will soon meet Iraq and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to seek a definitive rate of discount on crude oil similar to what Russia has provided so far, sources said. Multiple officials and industry executives said Iraq, which is India's biggest oil supplier, wants to discuss the level of discounts expected by Indian refiners. India's focus on snapping up ever-increasing volumes of Russian crude oil has led to a corresponding decline in imports from the Middle East. Flows from Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE have suffered as a result.
Mukesh Ambani-led Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) plans to invest Rs 75,000 crore ($9 billion) each into its new energy business and petrochemical expansion, according to a company presentation. In its FY25 result statement, Ambani said the company has laid a strong foundation for its projects in renewable energy and battery operations. "In the coming quarters, we will see the transition of this business from incubation to operationalisation.
Natural Gas production from KG-D6 block has dropped to 25.35 million standard cubic meters a day this month, from over 63 mmscmd peak output achieved in August 2010.
