India remains top destination for Russian Urals oil

According to sources, almost 70% of Russia’s seaborne Urals oil exports go to India. Attractive Urals prices translate into high margins for Indian refiners, and term agreements between Russian and Indian enterprises and lower freight charges also contribute to maintaining an adequate supply. Russian oil producers Rosneft and Indian Oil Corp. struck a supply agreement last month for up to 1.5 million tonnes (11 million barrels) of Russian oil each month beginning on April 1.

Meanwhile, the amount of Urals oil exported to China did not significantly rise in April. Only one 100,000-ton cargo was scheduled for delivery to the country’s ports in the first ten days of the month, despite traders’ observations that Chinese refineries were asking for late April to early May loading cargoes.

The Al-Hoceima ship-to-ship (STS) facility off the coast of Morocco, where the oil was supplied in March, will send some 280,000 tonnes of Urals to China. As opposed to what was anticipated, China is purchasing Urals, according to a person involved in Russian oil trading. Although refiners in other Asia-Pacific nations are also interested, they continued, “many are still terrified of sanctions, therefore marketing is delayed.” With no cargoes sent thus far in April, uranium deliveries to STS facilities in the Mediterranean continue to fall.
After supplying Myanmar for the first time in March, Russia’s Gazpromneft transported 140,000 tonnes of Urals from Novorossiisk to Burma in April.

A Few Recent Deals:

In 2018, Indian oil companies signed an agreement to purchase up to 9 million barrels of oil from Russia’s Rosneft. This was part of a larger deal worth over $5 billion that also included the joint development of oil and gas fields in Russia and India.

In 2019, Indian oil company Nayara Energy (formerly known as Essar Oil) signed a deal with Rosneft to increase its crude oil supplies from Russia. The transaction reportedly cost $4 billion.

India and Russia agreed to work together to develop India’s strategic petroleum reserves in a memorandum of understanding (MoU) they signed in 2020.