India’s oil minister stated that global oil prices “would have hit the roof” if India hadn’t continued buying oil from Russia after the Ukraine war began. He emphasized that India will source oil based on the best prices available.

India, the world’s third-largest oil importer, is now the top buyer of discounted Russian oil, which Western countries have avoided since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in early 2022. Before this, India bought only a small amount of oil from Russia, despite a long-standing defense partnership.

New Delhi has defended its Russian oil purchases as necessary to control prices in a developing nation with a population of 1.42 billion. “Many people don’t realize that global oil prices would have skyrocketed if India hadn’t bought oil from Russia,” India’s oil minister, Hardeep Singh Puri, wrote on social media.

India’s imports of Russian oil rose by 11.7% in September, reaching around 1.9 million barrels daily, making up about 40% of the country’s total oil imports that month. Russia remains India’s largest oil supplier, followed by Iraq and Saudi Arabia.