Industry Odisha Bureau, Sep 08: India’s oil import map looks wider than ever. Thirty-one countries supplied crude between March and August. Yet this broader map hides a narrower reality. Russia now commands nearly half of all imports.
The contradiction sits at the heart of India’s energy story. More countries sold crude to Indian refiners this period. But actual supply concentration climbed rather than eased. Kpler data captures this paradox clearly across six months.
Start with the new entrants first. Ten countries shipped crude having sent none previously. Nine of them combined for just 1.4%. Only Venezuela broke that pattern meaningfully, reaching nearly 5% share.
Russia’s ascent explains most of the shift. Its import share jumped from 29% to 47%. That’s a jump of roughly 770,000 barrels daily. Total Russian volumes now touch 2.25 million barrels per day.
Numbers alone don’t capture concentration well. That’s where the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index becomes useful here. This index measures how tightly supply clusters around few sellers. Anything above 2,500 signals genuinely high concentration levels.
India’s HHI jumped 56% during the same period. It rose from 1,606 to 2,513 overall. That places India firmly in high-concentration territory now. More suppliers, paradoxically, produced a less diversified outcome.
Iraq’s collapse partly explains Russia’s rise. Its import share crashed from 18% to 2%. Iraqi volumes fell by roughly 820,000 barrels daily. Russia’s gain almost exactly mirrored that Iraqi shortfall.
The top-five supplier club barely loosened its grip. These five nations still commanded 76% of imports. That’s only marginally down from 79% previously. But the lineup itself shifted meaningfully behind the scenes.
Venezuela and Brazil pushed into this elite group. They replaced the United States and Nigeria entirely. Russia, Saudi Arabia and the UAE held their positions. Continuity at the top masked churn beneath it.
Other suppliers moved in smaller, quieter ways. Saudi volumes dropped by roughly 300,000 barrels daily. American shipments fell by about 200,000 barrels daily. Angola, Oman and Brazil offered partial offsetting increases.
Overall demand told its own story too. India’s total crude imports slipped 5% overall. Daily imports settled near 4.77 million barrels. Fewer barrels, sourced from more places, oddly enough.
Most new suppliers barely registered beyond single months. Iran, Ecuador, Algeria and Canada appeared briefly. The Bahamas and Netherlands showed similarly fleeting participation here. None became durable fixtures in India’s sourcing mix.
An industry executive offered a grounded explanation. Traders simply chased available barrels amid Gulf disruptions. This wasn’t strategic diversification but reactive scrambling instead. Refiners needed crude; geography became secondary to availability.
Brent crude touched six-week highs during this same window. Prices reached $97.31 a barrel amid regional tensions. Yet price movements remained secondary to the sourcing story. The real narrative was concentration disguised as expansion.
India added countries to its supplier list. It did not add resilience to its supply chain. Russia’s dominance, not diversification, defined this six-month period.
