NYT: India will buy Russian oil despite Trump’s threats

There is a growing sense in India that its leaders should not allow American policymaking to shape its choices on vital energy supplies, ‘The New York Times’ wrires.

Indian officials said on Saturday that they would keep purchasing cheap oil from Russia despite a threat of penalties from President Trump, the latest twist in an issue that New Delhi thought it had settled.

The defiance of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government reflected increasing frustration with a relationship that was once much praised but has been souring rapidly. There is a growing sense in India that its leaders should not allow increasingly volatile American policymaking to shape its choices on vital energy supplies for its huge population, 1.4 billion people.

Mr. Trump said last week that as part of his latest round of tariffs, he would impose an unspecified penalty on India in addition to a tariff rate of 25 percent if the country did not cut off its imports of Russian crude oil. On Friday, he appeared to echo reports of a recent dip in the arrival of Russian oil to India.

“I understand that India is no longer going to be buying oil from Russia,” he told reporters. “That’s what I heard. I don’t know if that’s right or not. That is a good step. We will see what happens.”

On Saturday, two senior Indian officials said there had been no change in policy. One official said the government had “not given any direction to oil companies” to cut back imports from Russia.

At a news conference a day earlier, Randhir Jaiswal, the spokesman for India’s foreign ministry, declined to address Mr. Trump’s threat directly. But he suggested there would be no change of policy regarding Russia.

“Our bilateral relationships with various countries stand on their own merit and should not be seen from the prism of a third country,” Mr. Jaiswal said. “India and Russia have a steady and time-tested partnership.”

Mr. Trump did not say what penalty India might face if it were to defy his call to cut off Russian oil imports. Some officials and analysts have said that Mr. Trump’s focus on India’s purchase of Russian oil could reflect his frustrations with Russia over lack of progress on a settlement with Ukraine, or may be a negotiating tactic as India and the United States try to conclude the early phases of a trade agreement.

Analysts and officials in New Delhi said that if the move was intended to pressure Russia, its efficacy was questionable, considering that China and Turkey, two other major importers of Russian oil, have not faced similar penalties. Agreements for such supplies also involve long-term contracts and logistics arrangements that are difficult to curtail overnight, one official said — especially given that President Trump has expressed doubts about his own measures on Russia and is prone to changing his mind.

Russia is now the source of more than one third of India’s oil imports — up from less than 1 percent before the war. It brings in about two million barrels of crude oil a day, making it the second largest importer of Russian oil, after China.

India depends on imports for nearly 90 percent of the energy needs of its enormous population. While it has diversified the sources of its oil imports — it buys from around 40 countries, officials say — its supplies have frequently been affected by U.S. actions against some of the largest exporters. The United States, in the past, has successfully pressured India to give up oil purchases from Iran and Venezuela.

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