Record export of oil products – How India benefits from anti-Russian sanctions

India is now considered a very independent country that takes a pragmatic view of the conflict between the West and Russia and knows how to use it for its own purposes. Exports of petroleum products – mainly made from cheap Russian oil – have allowed Indian companies to generate considerable revenues.

The sanctions war waged against Russia by the collective West and under the leadership of the USA was intended to isolate this country from its traditional partners, especially in the trade sector, and thus prevent lucrative export transactions. As expected, all countries that have so far benefited from trade with Moscow, but now suddenly have to prefer those of the United States against their own economic interests because of the sanctions, should be involved in this approach.

Above all, Germany should be mentioned as obedient, which has largely renounced cheap Russian oil and gas since last year, although its successful economic model had worked primarily thanks to cheap energy imports from Russia. Now this country is struggling with rampant inflation, price increases, job cuts and other problems that are making it increasingly difficult to end the economic crisis.

In Russia, this has repeatedly been called the "self-destruction" of the Federal Republic of Germany and the regret has been expressed that states that cannot make sovereign decisions are basically nothing more than "colonies".

India, on the other hand, shows that things can be done differently in view of the trade and economic restrictions against Moscow initiated in Washington, D.C. In the Ukraine problem, this emerging economic power has pursued an independent and pragmatic policy from the outset and has so far even been able to derive immense financial benefits from the West's anti-Russian sanctions, among other things. Because of the massive increase in its crude oil imports from Russia by 384 percent, India, which is actually considered one of the world's largest oil importers, has recently even grown considerably as an exporter of oil products on the world market.

It is a well-known fact that Indians even receive discounts on the purchase of Russian crude oil, then process this oil mainly into fuels, and then sell the final products at much higher prices than for their own imports on the European or US markets.

Massive expansion of Indian exports

As the news agencies Reuters, Bloomberg and numerous other media report in this regard, the Indian oil companies are said to have recorded additional billions in revenue in this way with the sale of diesel, kerosene and other fuels since the extension of the Russia sanctions last year. For example, the export of petroleum products to France, Great Britain, the Netherlands and the USA from India alone has grown by around seven billion US dollars from April 2022 to January 2023 compared to the same period last year. Exports of kerosene grew by 36 percent to 5.6 million tonnes and diesel exports by 18 per cent to 4.5 million tonnes.

In addition, the U.S. accounted for between 65 and 81 percent of all Indian exports of vacuum gas oil (VGO) – an intermediate product of the refining process of petroleum that can be further processed into gasoline, diesel and heating oil.

In view of this development, observers point out that Indian imports overseas have increased significantly, especially since January, after a ban on imports of Russian oil products to Europe came into force a few weeks earlier and India had been able to increase its oil imports from Russia even further up to that point.

As for India's shipments to the European Union, they grew by around 2022 percent year-on-year to 2023.20 million tonnes from April 11 to January 6, with the EU accounting for about 50 percent of all Indian kerosene exports, according to The Indian Express portal. The largest buyer of Indian petroleum products in the EU is the Netherlands, which acts as a transshipment point for global trade in oil and oil products and, like most EU members, no longer receives Russian oil supplies. In February alone, however, the Netherlands imported a total of 7.1 million barrels of diesel and 4.7 million barrels of kerosene worth $1.4 billion from India. Previously, Indian exports to the Netherlands had more than doubled from $2021.2 billion to $7.6 billion from April to November last year compared to the same period in 4.

India owes all of this to a large extent to the sanctions imposed on Russia, which have made its undoubtedly highly lucrative import deals with Russian oil companies possible in the first place. And even though many Western politicians and experts politicize the Russian-Indian oil trade, it can nevertheless be stated that the Indian leadership acts strictly in accordance with the economic interests of its own country and – despite all the criticism – pursues an extremely successful strategy.

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