By Alex Kimani of OilPrice.com
Freight rates to ship Russian urals from Baltic ports to India jumped 20% in February to $7 million to $8 million per voyage after the Biden administration imposed harsher sanctions on Russian crude.
Russia's provisional February loading plan for western ports was revised up by 19% to 1.9 million barrels per day, Reuters calculations showed early this month. Russian refineries are processing more crude oil in the hope of boosting fuel exports after the Biden administration imposed fresh sanctions on Russian crude. The sanctions have targeted Surgutneftgas and Gazprom Neft, two Russian oil firms that handle 25% of Russian oil exports. The two companies shipped an average of 970,000 bbls a day in 2024.
"We have to utilize oil processing as much as we can in order to use (the sanctioned) oil," a Russian industry source said.
Middlemen who supply Russian oil have stopped offering cargoes after the latest U.S. sanctions, Bharat Petroleum CFO has revealed. Bharat Petroleum and other Indian state refiners buy Russian oil in the spot market, mainly from traders.
"We have not received any new offers for the March window (delivery). Traders are asking us to wait. We are waiting to get offers," Vetsa Ramakrishna Gupta told Reuters.
"We are not expecting the similar number of cargoes that we used to get in the months of December and January," he added.
The Indian government is considering extra energy imports from the United States, as Prime Minister Narendra Modi visits the country and a scheduled meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump. Modi is set to hold bilateral talks with Trump.
Meanwhile, India’s oil demand growth is estimated to have exceeded China’s for the first time in 2024, and is expected to do so again in 2025. According to Kang Wu, global head of macro and oil demand research at SPGCI, India’s oil demand in the current year grew by 180,000 barrels per day, surpassing China’s growth at 148,000 bpd. India’s oil demand is expected to increase by 3.2% Y/Y in 2025 compared to a 1.7% clip by China.