SINGAPORE/NEW DELHI (Reuters) -Indian Oil Corp (IOC), the country’s top refiner, has bought 7 million barrels of September-arrival crude from the United States, Canada and the Middle East via a tender, several trade sources said on Monday.
IOC’s large spot crude purchase comes after the arbitrage window for U.S. crude to Asia opened and as Indian state refiners paused buying of Russian crude oil on narrowing discounts. U.S. President Donald Trump has warned countries not to purchase oil from Moscow, which is under sanctions over its February 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
IOC bought 4.5 million barrels of U.S. crude, 500,000 barrels of Canada’s Western Canadian Select (WCS) and two million barrels of Das oil produced in Abu Dhabi, the sources said. They declined to be named because they were not authorised to speak to the media.
The higher-than-normal purchases are partly to replace Russian barrels, two of the sources said.
India, the world’s third-largest oil importer, is the biggest buyer of seaborne Russian crude.
Indian state refiners – IOC, Hindustan Petroleum Corp, Bharat Petroleum Corp and Mangalore Refinery Petrochemical Ltd – had not sought Russian crude in the past week or so, Reuters reported last week.
In IOC’s tender that closed on Friday, P66 and Equinor will each ship 1 million barrels of U.S. West Texas Intermediate Midland crude while Mercuria will ship 2 million barrels of the same grade, the sources said. Vitol will deliver 1 million barrels of WTI Midland and WCS, they added.
Trafigura will deliver 2 million barrels of Das.
Prices for the deals were not immediately available.
The purchases also came amid additional sanctions by the European Union on the Russian energy trade.
(Reporting by Florence Tan, Siyi Liu in Singapore and Nidhi Verma in New Delhi; Editing by Kate Mayberry)
