 "oil sector")
Even as refining officials mull receiving discounted Russian crude oil beyond August 27, when US President Donald Trump’s tariffs kick in, gains accrued since 2022 from India’s purchase of Russian grades are not uniformly distributed, with private sector refiners becoming the biggest beneficiaries.
State-run refiners, cosseted by New Delhi’s fixed fuel price regime, have gained less, industry sources said and ship-tracking data showed.
Just two Indian refiners, both private, accounted for a combined 881,000 barrels per day (bpd) of the 1.8 million bpd in total imports of discounted Russian crude oil in 2025 until date, according to
data from maritime intelligence agency Kpler.
There were seven Indian importers for the oil.
Over the in the 2022 to 2025 period — ever since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022 that led to a series of sanctions and bars on its oil — Reliance Industries and Russian Rosneft-operated Nayara Energy still accounted for over 40 per cent of the average 1.5 million bpd supplies India sourced from Russia.
Russia vaulted to capture an average 32 per cent share of the Indian crude oil import market on an average over the last 42 months from 2 per cent in 2021. This was at the expense of Saudi Arabia, US and Nigeria, among others.
In June 2025, the share was a record 45 per cent, meaning virtually every second barrel of India’s overseas crude came from Russia.
Reliance has been the biggest beneficiary of this exercise even though the extent of profits is unknown.
“The transactions resulted in Indian businesses earning an estimated $16 billion in excess profits,” US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent claimed in an interview to CNBC this week.
“This... Indian arbitrage — buying cheap Russian oil, reselling it as a product — has just sprung during the war, which is unacceptable,” Bessent added. “They are just profiteering. They are reselling.”
G7+ countries imported euro 18 billion ($21 billion) worth of oil products from six refineries in India and Turkey. Of this, an estimated euro 9 billion was refined from Russian crude in the third year of the Ukraine invasion, Finnish think tank CREA said in a report.
Reliance’s Jamnagar refinery topped the list, with CREA estimating that over euro 4 billion of its euro 12 billion in fuel exports to G7+ nations were processed from Russian oil. ONGC’s Mangalore was fourth on the list with Vadinar refinery in sixth place.
India savings
It is true that India may have saved a total of around $15 billion between January 2022 and June 2025 on purchases of discounted Russian crude oil, compared to the rates of alternative Gulf and US crudes. This is according to calculations by Business Standard based on detailed Customs and ship tracking data, Budget documents, and industry officials.
But as a top government official told Business Standard this week that Russian crude is not sanctioned unlike say Iranian or Venezuelan oils.
“The product is not sanctioned,” he said.
Officials from the previous Joe Biden administration in the US had publicly endorsed India’s purchase of Russian oil because “the product was never sanctioned,” the official said.
Much of the savings, which peaked at around $7 billion in 2023 propelled by record discounts on Russian oil that year, have accrued to Reliance and Nayara. This is primarily because Indian state-run refiners have a responsibility towards a price controlled domestic fuel market. But private refiners export a large portion of their output to Europe and Asia at lucrative prices.
Reliance and Nayara were not available for comments.
Russian oil is still discounted at $2-$3 per barrel off Brent or Dubai benchmarks on a delivered basis and is cheaper than delivered Saudi or UAE grades by $5-$6 per barrel. It offers substantial value for fuel exporters. It's not the same for Indian Oil or Bharat Petroleum, which have used gains from Russian oil to indirectly subsidise sales of petrol, diesel and LPG, refining officials said.
Reliance and Nayara together accounted for 81 per cent of India’s fuel exports this year in volume terms, primarily of middle distillates like diesel and jet fuel.
At 914,000 bpd, Reliance accounted for 71 per cent of India’s exports.
The Jamnagar refinery exported around 67 per cent of its production, and in June imports of Russian oil at 746,000 bpd made up over half of Jamnagar’s 1.36 million bpd capacity. A surge in Reliance’s Russian oil purchases in 2025 was on the back of a 500,000-bpd contract that the refiner agreed with Rosneft for supplies of Urals grade this year.
Much of the remaining fuel exports was from ONGC’s Mangalore refinery, which at 114,000 bpd was just below Nayara’s 118,000 bpd — both refiners export 38 per cent and 30 per cent of their total capacity, respectively. But the proportion of their Russian oil purchases in their overall crude oil imports is as high as 53 per cent and 71 per cent, respectively.
Fuel exports are not chump change — India exported $84.1 billion worth of petroleum products in FY24 and $63.3 billion in FY25, according to Customs data.
Diesel exports totalled $24 billion while jet fuel was $15 billion in FY25. Classified under middle distillates, Russian Urals grade is valued for producing a higher proportion of these transport fuels.
Another $15.5 billion was generated from exports of gasoline and other light oils, which are primarily derived from light, sweet grades like US Midland, said Florian Grünberger, an analyst at Kpler, in a note.
