The Indian Navy on Saturday said its guided missile destroyer INS Visakhapatnam has deployed a team to help fire-fighting efforts on board British oil tanker MV Marlin Luanda which has got 22 Indian and one Bangladeshi crew members.
'Preliminary investigations suggest that the cause of the fires are small flying objects, possibly belonging to drones, that fell in the two areas. Teams from the competent authorities have been dispatched and the fire is currently being put out,' news reports said.
India's crude oil imports from Russia strengthened in the first half of October, reversing a three-month slide in arrivals seen during July-September as refineries were back on full stream to meet festive demand, according to ship tracking data.
An investigation into the disappearance of a merchant navy cadet off the Sri Lankan coast reveals his last known location and details of the search efforts.
The 2025 US National Security Strategy marks a major pullback, with America turning backward and effectively allowing China greater dominance in Asia. while long-time partners like India are left to face an increasingly unstable global order largely on their own, observes Rajeev Srinivasan.
Tips to avoid the heat, crowds, and travel risks, including incidents like the tragic Mufrihat accident that killed 45 Indian pilgrims.
Brent crude oil prices can touch $150 a barrel (bbl) - up a whopping 103 per cent from the current levels - in the worst-case scenario if the Israel-Iran geopolitical tensions escalate, suggest analysts.
Thirteen Indians are among the 16-member crew of a Comoros-flagged oil tanker that went missing after it capsized off the coast of Oman, the country's maritime authority said.
India is preoccupied with analysing the US sanctions, which may cut off India's access to discounted Russian crude and force it to buy at market prices.
According to a situation report issued by the DGS, the oil containment measures have temporarily stabilised the situation, but full risk mitigation will happen only on successful commencement of saturation diving to extract the remaining trapped fuel oil from the vessel, MSC Elsa 3.
Incidents in the maritime sector involving Indian seafarers, and foreign vessels in Indian waters rose by 21.6 per cent in 2024 to 186, highlighting the need to strengthen safety frameworks.
Indian refiners are likely to import 2-2.2 million barrels per day of Russian crude oil in June - the highest in the last two years and more than the total volumes bought from Iraq, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Kuwait, preliminary data by global trade analytics firm Kpler showed.
'There are times when India should stand up without hesitation and voice its indignation over the US' pressure tactic. This is one such moment,' asserts Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
Russian shipments averaged 1.67 million barrels per day in January compared to 1.48 million bpd in December and 1.53 million bpd a year earlier.
The wide-ranging sanctions imposed by the US on the Russian oil sector have started to dent near-term oil flows to India with state-owned Bharat Petroleum Corporation Ltd (BPCL) saying not enough cargoes are available for March.
Urals and Sokol accounted for every 4 out of 5 barrels of Russian supplies to India last year.
India, the world's third largest oil consuming and importing nation, in July bought $2.8 billion worth of crude oil from Russia, second only to China which remains the largest importer of Russian oil, a report said. Russia emerged as India's biggest supplier of crude oil, which is converted into fuels like petrol and diesel in refineries, after Russian oil was available on discount following some European nations shunning purchases from Moscow over its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
US strikes on Iran's three main nuclear facilities have once again raised concerns that Tehran might shut down the Strait of Hormuz - one of the world's most critical chokepoints, through which a fifth of global oil and gas supply flows.
Indian Navy's destroyer INS Kochi responded following the attack on the vessel, MV Andromeda Star, on April 26, officials said, adding all the crew members are safe.
At least 16 people were killed and several more injured when North Atlantic Treaty Organisation oil tankers bound for Afghanistan were targeted with bombs in the Pakistani border town of Landi Kotal on Saturday, officials said.
The Indian government has dismissed claims of a suicide attack on an Army brigade in Jammu and Kashmir and a drone attack in Punjab as "fake news." The Press Information Bureau's Fact Check Unit found the claims to be false and attributed the spread of disinformation to coordinated efforts by certain social media handles and mainstream media in Pakistan. The government urged citizens to rely on verified sources and refrain from sharing unverified content.
India's export of fuels like diesel to the European Union jumped 58 per cent in the first three quarters of 2024, with a bulk of them likely coming from refining discounted Russian oil, according to a monthly tracker report. The EU/G7 countries in December 2022 introduced a price cap and an embargo on the imports of Russian crude oil in a bid to cripple Kremlin's revenue and create a vacuum in its funding for the invasion of Ukraine.
Taliban militants targeted a convoy of the NATO supply vehicles and torched 50 oil tankers in northwest Pakistan, hours after a similar attack in the southwest killed a man and destroyed 20 tankers.
India, the world's third largest oil consuming and importing nation, bought crude oil worth 49 billion euros from Russia in the third year of Moscow's invasion of Ukraine, a global think tank said. India, which has traditionally sourced its oil from the Middle East, began importing a large volume of oil from Russia soon after the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Indian imports of Russian crude oil may stabilise or even decline in 2024 from record 2023 levels amid shrinking discounts, lower output, and a rebound in West Asian supplies, according to the ship-tracking data and industry executives. This may impact the billions of dollars in annual savings that India made last year. Imports of Russian oil jumped by a record 140 per cent in calendar 2023 to 1.79 million barrels a day (b/d) from 740,400 b/d in 2022, when Russia marched into Ukraine in February, and from just 102,000 b/d in 2021, according to the data from Paris-based market intelligence agency Kpler.
Twenty tankers which were destroyed were on their way to Afghanistan, and were attacked on the outskirts of Quetta, the capital of Balochistan province, early on Wednesday morning,a group of gunmen opened fire at nearly 40 tankers parked at Akhtarabad along the main highway between Quetta and the border town of Chaman, a witness said.
Petrol pumps in Mumbai, Nagpur and other parts of the state witnessed long queues on Tuesday as people came to fill up their vehicle tanks fearing shortage of fuel amid the protest by truck drivers.
A resurgence in Saudi Arabian supplies of crude oil to India coupled with an attack on an Iraqi tanker in August carrying crude to Europe may result in improved bargaining power for India with West Asian and Russian suppliers for winter supplies. Shipments of Saudi oil rebounded in September from August, surging to the highest since March while Russian oil shipments rose marginally as Saudi Arabia tried to claw back market share in Asia, according to industry sources and ship tracking data.
An Indian crew member of a Comoros-flagged oil tanker that capsized off the Oman coast has died, officials said on Thursday.
A driver of a North Atlantic Treaty Organisation oil tanker was killed and his assistant injured when suspected militants attacked the vehicle in Balochistan province of southwest Pakistan on Friday, police said.
Adani Group on Monday said it does not handle any cargo coming from Iran or any Iranian-owned ship at any of its ports, as it denied any deliberate engagement in sanctions evasion. In a stock exchange filing, the group said reports of links between any of its entities and Iranian LPG are "baseless and mischievous".
Somali pirates have released a Greek-owned oil tanker with 26 crew members, including 11 Indians, after holding them captive for ten months, the vessel's operating company said on Tuesday.
Iran on Thursday ordered a release of an Indian tanker seized by it in Persian Gulf while carrying crude from Basrah in Iraq and taken to its Bandar Abbas Port 24 days ago.
Navy officials on Monday said that the swift response by the Indian Navy's mission deployed warship INS Sumitra ensured the safe release of the hijacked vessel and its crew.
State-owned Indian Strategic Petroleum Reserves Ltd (ISPRL), which operates India's strategic crude oil storage, will make awards by December to lease around 1 million tons of crude oil storage space (7.3 million barrels) at two of the country's three existing Strategic Petroleum Reserves (SPRs), around a fifth of the total SPR capacity. This will enable the refilling of crude caverns even as escalating hostilities in the Gulf threaten disruptions in crude supplies, two industry sources said.
India's crude oil imports from Russia fell for a second straight month in January to its lowest in 12 months but the nation's insatiable appetite for Russian crude remains for the long term, according to data from energy cargo tracker and industry officials. Russia supplied 1.2 million barrels per day of crude oil to India in January, down from 1.32 million barrels in December and 1.62 million barrels in November 2023, according to data from energy cargo tracker Vortexa. Russia however continues to remain India's top oil supplier, accounting for a little less than a quarter of 4.91 million barrels a day of oil that the world's third largest energy consumer imported in January.
Let's take a look at most important oil chokepoints in the world.
Trump has a major decision to take in coming days -- specifically, how to rescue Israel from the attritional war that lies ahead, points out Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar.
'Given that the situation is quickly escalating, such attacks will affect the flow of crude in the short term from West Asia' Subhayan Chakraborty and Dhruvaksh Saha report.
An Indian sailor was feared dead while 22 others were rescued from a burning but empty Indian-owned oil tanker off the Malaysian coast on Monday.
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