India, the world’s third-largest energy consumer, will buy oil from wherever it can get on a predictable and sound basis, the country’s oil minister Hardeep Singh Puri said.
The country will play its market card, the minister said, while speaking at the India Energy Week in Bengaluru on Monday.
India has so far shunned western pressures to raise imports of crude from Russia in recent months.
India oil imports
Russia, whose oil is available at discount due to economic sanctions by the Western nations, has of late emerged as India’s top oil supplier, accounting for 28 percent of its imports in January.
“I will be very frank, we will play the market card. We will import from wherever it is available on a predictable and sound basis,” Puri said, reported PTI.
The minister said India was not just diversifying supply sources, the country was also rapidly moving towards alternative energy sources.
“And we are drastically increasing our transition to green energy, which means biofuels, compressed biogas, green hydrogen and so on,” he said.
Puri said energy security means at least availability, supply, predictability, stability, and affordability.
”But if the global system confronts what can only be called a crisis, or in this case you had multiple crises – food, fertilisers, and fuel – and the amount of energy available for the 100 million bpd required for consumption, say falls short by 1-2 million barrels, then prices will shoot up,” he said.
The countries which do not have the bandwidth to cushion this kind of mismatch are most vulnerable, he said.
India used a combination of tax cuts and price freeze to insulate the consumers from energy prices shooting up sharply in the aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
“Therefore, from my point of view, in a large democracy like India where 60 million people go to the petrol pump every morning to fill up, where 5 million barrels of crude are consumed in a day, energy security means not having to worry about whether that crude is going to be available or not.
Puri said the government will ensure that the country does not face the same situation again.
“We are drastically increasing our area under exploration and production, we are entering into long-term supply arrangements, and since we are the world’s third-largest consumer,” he said.
Energy security, he said, has far more ramifications for countries which are neither oil producers, heavily dependent on imports, and whose economic situation at the time means high energy prices could have the effect of derailing their economy.
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