India Doubles Russian Oil Imports, Eyes LNG Deal
Get the Geopolitics newsletter
Daily geopolitics — wars, elections, sanctions, the diplomatic moves that move markets. Free.
- India and Russia agreed at a March 19 meeting in Delhi between Russian Deputy Energy Minister Pavel Sorokin and Indian Petroleum and Gas Minister Hardeep Singh Puri to prepare for Russia to resume direct LNG sales to India for the first time since the start of the Ukraine war, with negotiations potentially concluding in weeks.
- India's Russian crude purchases could double from January's reduced levels to at least 40% of total imports within about a month, according to three people familiar with the deliberations; India bought nearly US$44 billion of Russian crude in 2025.
- India had sharply curtailed Russian crude purchases in January as a concession to Trump, who imposed tariffs of up to 50% on Indian goods in August; the US Supreme Court has since ruled Trump acted unlawfully in enacting those tariffs.
- Iran's retaliation for the US-Israeli attack on February 28 targeted ships in the Strait of Hormuz, through which about half of India's crude oil and LNG supplies pass, causing long lines at Indian gas stations and some restaurants to run out of cooking gas.
- India has already approached Washington about a possible sanctions waiver for the Russian LNG deal, and a March 20 Cabinet secretariat briefing noted that cutting Russian crude purchases would have 'buffered the situation to a extent.'
- Moscow is pressing its advantage: any new LNG accord is expected to carry less favorable terms than India's 2012 GAIL-Gazprom 20-year deal because it is 'now a seller's market,' and Russian state power grid company Rosseti proposed entering India's power transmission sector.
Why it matters: India bought US$44 billion of Russian crude in 2025 and is now racing to lock in even more after the Hormuz disruption — a reversal of its January concession to Trump. Moscow gains a deeper economic foothold in South Asia and seller's-market pricing on LNG, while Washington faces the awkward position of having already loosened Russian oil sanctions for India and now being asked to waive LNG penalties on top.
