London: India’s Foreign Minister says it is only natural for a country to seek cheap oil, amid criticisms that India is exploiting bargains offered by Moscow and undermining Western sanctions to stop Russia’s war on Ukraine.
Australia, US, UK and Canada have banned all imports of Russian oil and gas. The European Union has stopped short of joining because many member countries are dependent on Russian hydrocarbons.
India’s Foreign Minister S. Jaishankar’s, Dean Godson from the Policy Exchange and Britain’s Liz Truss speak in Delhi,
India, which sources the bulk of its defence weapons from Russia, has refrained from joining in Western sanctions. It has refused to condemn Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war, instead cashing in on the bargains that are being offered.
According to Bloomberg, Russia is offering India discounts of as much as $US35 ($47) a barrel on prices before the war.
Data compiled by Reuters shows India has bought at least 13 million barrels of Russian crude oil since Russia’s invasion in late February. Last year, India bought 16 million barrels over 12 months.
This week the US and Australia, both members along with Japan and India of the Quad security alliance, expressed concerns about a proposal for India to use Russia’s financial payments system to get around the sanctions on SWIFT.
Deleep Singh, the US Deputy National Security Advisor said his country did not want to see a “rapid acceleration” in India’s take up of Russian energy imports but stressed that “friends don’t set red lines”.
Speaking alongside Britain’s foreign secretary Liz Truss during her visit to Delhi, India’s Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar said seeking cheap deals was only natural.
“When oil prices go up, I think it’s natural for countries to go out into the market and look for what are good deals for their people,” he said.
He said criticism of India looked “almost like a campaign” as the biggest buyers of Russian oil and gas were in Europe and that it had increased its purchases by 15 per cent compared to the month prior.
India’s Foreign Minister S. Jaishankar, Dean Godson from the Policy Exchange and Britain’s Liz Truss speak in Delhi, India at the India-UK Strategic Futures Forum on Thursday, March 31, 2022.
“I am pretty sure that if we wait two or three months and actually look at who are the big buyers of Russian gas and oil, I suspect the list won’t be very different to what it used to be and I suspect we won’t be in the top 10 of that list,” he said.
Jaishankar said half of India’s energy supplies came from the Middle East, 8 per cent of oil from the US and 1 per cent from Russia.
Jaishankar was speaking at the first India-UK Strategic Futures gathering alongside his UK counterpart Liz Truss which was hosted by the Westminster-based think tank Policy Exchange.
Russia’s Foreign Affairs Minister Sergei Lavrov also travelled to Delhi, following his visit to China, on Thursday. He will hold talks with Jaishankar but unlike Truss, will also be received by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on his two-day visit.
UK Foreign Secretary Liz Truss.
Lavrov and Truss’ paths were not expected to cross in the Indian capital on her one-day stay.
Truss stressed that India and Britain, which colonised the subcontinent until partition and independence in 1947 shared common goals and values.
She said she would not tell India what to do but cited the UK’s own difficulties in stripping out Chinese-made telecommunications equipment made by Huawei from its networks.
“India is a sovereign nation, I’m not going to tell India what to do,” Truss said.
“Necessarily, dependency on energy or dependency on technology takes time to address so we are now removing Huawei from UK telecoms networks but that takes time.
“And that is also true of other countries and the important thing for me is that the G7 set a timetable to end that dependency and send a strong signal in the market.
“The biggest danger at the moment is that we let our foot off the gas on sanctions and we can’t do that,” she said.
She said sanctions should be imposed even if Russia agreed to a ceasefire and withdrew troops from Ukraine.
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