Strait of Hormuz disruption: Amid West Asian oil supply concerns, a few tankers with Russian crude divert to India

‘Ready to meet additional demands from India, China’: Russia

Notably, on Wednesday, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak said that Moscow is ready to satisfy additional demand for oil from India and China, if the need arises. “Always ready,” Novak said in response to a question as to whether Russia plans to increase oil supplies to India and China amid the escalation of the conflict in the Middle East, Russian news agency Interfax reported. “Our oil is in demand. If they buy, we will sell,” the report quoted Novak as saying.

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Sources in the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas (MoPNG), while directly not commenting on the issue of additional oil imports from Russia, said that India is in touch with all international suppliers, including national oil companies and even large traders like Vitol, Trafigura, and ADNOC Trading, to source additional volumes of crude oil and liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) from their international portfolios. They assured that India is in a comfortable position with regard to oil and fuel stocks, and there was no need at present to ration fuels. They also ruled out any increase in retail fuel prices for the time being.

The Indian Express had reported on Monday that the government and public sector refiners were considering increasing imports of Russian crude as part of the effort to ensure oil supply continuity amid the effective halt in shipments through the critical chokepoint of the Strait of Hormuz. According to trade sources, apart from the option of getting oil from Russia, there is continued availability of Russian crude cargoes in the Indian Ocean and Arabian Sea region, including volumes in floating storage. This volume build-up was partly a result of Indian refiners substantially reducing their intake of Russian crude. Roughly 10 million barrels of Russian crude was available in Asian waters, as per industry estimates.

India’s crude import transit — 2.5–2.7 million bpd

In February, India imported 1.1 million barrels per day (bpd) of Russian crude, almost half of the 2025 peak of over 2 million bpd, as per tanker data from commodity market analytics firm Kpler. Loadings of Russian crude for Indian ports, which averaged 1.7 million bpd last year, was just 0.7 million bpd in February.

Around 2.5–2.7 million barrels per day (bpd) of India’s crude imports — accounting for around half of the country’s total oil imports — have transited the Strait of Hormuz in recent months. These are mainly from Iraq, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Kuwait. India is the world’s third-largest consumer of crude oil with an import dependency level of over 88%. The Strait of Hormuz—the narrow waterway between Iran and Oman that connects the Persian Gulf with the Gulf of Oman and the Arabian Sea—is seen as the most important oil transit chokepoint globally, handling approximately one-fifth of global liquid petroleum consumption and global liquefied natural gas (LNG) trade.

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Strait of Hormuz effectively shut now

With Iran warning vessels to not transit through the Strait of Hormuz, and even hitting a few vessels that were passing through the waterway, there is an effective halt in maritime traffic through the Strait with most trading houses, insurers, and vessels loath to get involved in the prevailing extremely high-risk environment. This has led to a jump in international prices of crude oil and LNG, prompting US President Donald Trump to announce that the US will step in to provide insurance, and military protection if necessary, to merchant vessels in the Gulf. According to sources, the government is in touch with US authorities to get an understanding on Trump’s proposal.

India has crude oil and fuel stocks for six to eight weeks and is in a “comfortable” position to prevent any near-term supply shortage when it comes to major fuels like petrol, diesel, and LPG amid the ongoing military conflict in West Asia, according to sources in the government. But given the uncertainty around how long it will take for energy flow via Hormuz to normalise, Indian refiners are in the market to secure more energy supplies from source markets other than the Gulf.

“We are in a comfortable position (on oil and petroleum fuels)…there is constant replenishment of stocks (of oil and gas from non-Hormuz dependent sources),” a top MoPNG official said Thursday. The official, who did not wish to be identified, also said that despite the jump in international oil and gas prices due to the conflict, retail fuel prices are unlikely to be hiked for the common Indian.

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Indian refiners have crude oil stocks to last around 25 days, and around half of these would be replenished on an ongoing basis as supply from non-Hormuz regions continues unabated. This inventory includes oil in refiners’ storage tanks and pipelines, and on tankers in transit. Additionally, India has strategic petroleum reserves that are currently estimated to hold crude reserves worth another week or so of the country’s daily oil consumption of 5.6 million bpd. Apart from the crude oil inventory and reserves, Indian refiners have sufficient stocks of major fuels like petrol, diesel, and LPG for another 25 days’ worth of domestic demand, the official added. As refineries continue to process crude, produce fuels, and get more oil from regions other than West Asia, these stocks will keep shifting, and the effective coverage would be extended.