“India did everybody a favour!”: Hardeep Singh Puri explains India’s stance to buy Russian oil

India’s decision to buy oil from Russia amid global uncertainties helped prevent a potential spike in global oil prices, Union Petroleum and Natural Gas minister Hardeep Singh Puri said in a recent interview to CNN.

Speaking to CNN’s Becky Anderson on the sidelines of the annual energy industry event ADIPEC in Abu Dhabi on Thursday, Union minister Puri explained that if the Indian government hadn’t bought Russian oil, global oil price would have gone up to 200 dollars for everyone.

Oil will remain a key part of the world’s energy supply for years to come, he said.

Puri told CNN, “Earlier I said I hope there will be a reduction in oil price. Today I’m more confident that there will be.”.

“By 2026, when more energy is available in the market, As a student of the situation, I think that the likelihood of prices remaining stable and coming down are higher”, Puri said.

On being asked why India reduced oil imports from Russia in October by around 10 per cent, Puri explained that happened because of competitive oil rates in the market. “There are other people willing to supply at the same competitive rate because the OPEC position is they don’t deal with price. There’s healthy competition going on. If you don’t get it from one, you get it from someone else”, he said.

On being questioned whether the reduction in Russian oil imports was a strategic decision, Puri said, “These are oil decisions taken in the marketplace. When we face February 22 there was 13 million barrels of Russian oil on the market suddenly if that oil had gone off the market and India had decided to shift its 5 million barrels to say suppliers in the Gulf, price of oil would have gone up to 200 a barrel. So I think we did everybody a favour”.

He said technological changes such as green hydrogen and the transition to cleaner energy will change the global oil demand landscape in five years.

Puri also took to his X account to share details.

“India did the entire world a favour by buying Russian oil because if we had not done so, the global oil prices would have skyrocketed to USD 200/barrel. Russian oil was never under any sanctions and there was only a price cap, which Indian entities also followed.”

He also pointed out that some “ill informed commentators” wanting to put restrictions on India when European and Asian countries had also engaged in significant energy purchases from Russia.

“Let us not forget that while some ill informed commentators talked about putting restrictions on India, many other European and Asian nations bought much more crude oil, diesel, LNG, rare earth minerals worth billions of dollars from Russia. We will continue to buy energy from whoever offers the best rates to our oil companies” Puri wrote.

The union minister also noted in his X post, “We need to ensure steady availability, affordability and sustainability of energy for our 7 crore citizens who visit a petrol pump everyday. That’s our top priority. India is the only major consumer where fuel prices has come down significantly in the last three years despite unprecedented global price increases in other nations”.

India is the third largest oil consumer in the world, as estimated by the International Energy Agency 2024.