India's Sept crude oil imports fall 6.7% to 16 mn tonnes; 5.8% YoY decline

India's crude oil imports in September fell to 16.46 million tonnes, down 6.7% from a month ago, government data showed on Friday.

On a yearly basis, imports dipped by 5.8%, data from the website of the Petroleum Planning and Analysis Cell showed.

The drop in intakes come against a backdrop of maintenance at refiners such as Reliance Industries and Indian Oil Corp.

Russia's share of India's April-September crude imports rose to 17% from 0.7% a year earlier, data from sources has shown.

India has emerged as Russia's second biggest oil buyer after China, taking advantage of discounted prices as Western buyers stay away due to Moscow's invasion of Ukraine.

Oil product imports came in lower for a second straight month, falling about 4% from a month earlier to 3.48 million tonnes in September, while exports dropped 4.8%. Of the 4.98 million tonnes of exports in September, diesel accounted for 2.69 million tonnes.

India, Asia's third-biggest economy, holds surplus refining capacity and exports refined fuels as well.

NOTE: The data for imports and exports is preliminary because private refiners share numbers at their discretion.

All figures are in millions of tonnes:

2022 2022 2022 2021 2021 2021

CRUDE OIL September August July September August July

IMPORTS 16.46 17.64 20.95 17.47 17.39 15.02

Imports:

2022 2022 2022 2021 2021 2021

PRODUCTS September August July September August July

LPG 1.46 1.58 1.43 1.57 1.70 1.42

Petrol 0.15 0.00 0.06 0.15 0.00 0.00

Naphtha 0.18 0.16 0.13 0.13 0.02 0.10

Kerosene 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00

Diesel 0.01 0.01 0.15 0.01 0.01 0.00

Fuel Oil 0.56 0.69 0.76 0.43 0.70 0.95

All 3.48 3.63 3.66 3.51 3.19 3.54

Exports:

2022 2022 2022 2021 2021 2021

PRODUCTS September August July September August July

Petrol 0.67 1.02 1.11 0.85 0.90 1.00

Naphtha 0.47 0.41 0.36 0.66 0.64 0.48

Diesel 2.69 2.36 2.18 2.80 2.60 2.26

Fuel Oil 0.16 0.22 0.19 0.13 0.16 0.30

Jet Fuel 0.69 0.75 0.58 0.29 0.32 0.34

All 4.98 5.23 4.68 4.94 4.80 4.70

NOTES:

Totals may not tally because all items are not included in the table and numbers are rounded up or down. The numbers for previous months have been revised.

(Reporting by Arundhati Sarkar in Bengaluru; Editing by Susan Fenton and Alison Williams)