Two senior officials from the US Department of Treasury have arrived in India to urge New Delhi to maintain the implementation of the oil price cap aimed at limiting profits to Russia. The G7 nations, the European Union, and Australia jointly implemented a price cap after the Ukraine war began.
In 2023, Russia had emerged as India's top oil supplier. India has strong economic and defence ties with Russia and has refrained from criticising Moscow over its war with Ukraine.
Jaishankar recently said relations between India and Russia have always been stable and friendly and defended India's decision to import Russian oil in the outbreak of the Ukraine conflict. Lavrov compared Jaishankar's defence as "national dignity".
Jaishankar highlighted that Europe shifted to the Middle East for energy procurement and that India cannot share the same view as European countries on Russia. He also highlighted that Western countries preferred Pakistan over India for arms supply, but the trend has changed in the last decade.
The United States, European Union, countries in the Group of Seven and Australia imposed a $60 a barrel limit in 2022 on Russian oil. Any purchases above the cap would violate the agreed-upon policy.
A series of production cuts over the past year has failed to substantially boost prices amid weakened demand from China and tighter monetary policy aimed at combating inflation. But with international travel back up to nearly pre-pandemic levels, the demand for oil likely will continue to rise.
"This is on our agenda, using our national currencies in our trade, commercial and economic exchanges particularly the example of India. We have made good progress in this...Hopefully, this could take new momentum and we could see widespread use of our national currencies in this process," the Irani
Speaking to reporters, John Kirby, NSC Coordinator for Strategic Communications said, "India has to make its own choices about (Russian) oil purchases and we hope that we can continue to see that they purchase Russian oil at or below the price cap, as they have been."
Flaunting the development as the beginning of a new relationship between Pakistan and the Russian Federation, PM Shehbaz congratulated his entire team for cracking a deal which had never happened.
Russia-origin seaborne crude exports averaged 3.87 million barrels per day in May, the highest since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022.
Out of the 45,000 metric tonnes of crude oil, 3,000 metric tonnes were offloaded from the Russian ship to Pakistan Refinery Limited, Geo TV reported.
Recently, Prime Minister Narendra Modi met Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in Japan's Hiroshima during the G7 Summit, where India advocated for peace talks through dialogue and diplomacy. The move, according to multiple Russian news outlets, was not appreciated by Moscow officials.
Although his Russia tour was the first visit by a Pakistani premier to Moscow in the past 23 years, Khan could not broker any deal that could give relief to the cash-strapped country.
Citing the statement released by Rosneft, the Russian media reported that the deal was signed during the working trip of Rosneft CEO Igor Sechin to India.
It is worth noting that India is the world’s third-largest oil-consuming and importing nation. It imports 85 per cent of its crude oil needs.
The diplomat claimed India is neither Taiwan nor South Korea and added it is a rising power with a powerful economy. Elahi claimed that New Delhi can easily resist the power of the West.
Pakistan, which is currently grappling with high external debt and a weak local currency, is desperate to purchase cheap crude at discounted rates from Russia.
Notably, both the EU and the US adopted further price caps for seaborne Russian petroleum products including diesel and fuel oil last week.
However, the Russian official noted that the relations between India and Russia are decades old and added the ties between the two nations would not be affected by any external factors.
According to the top EU official, two price levels have been set for Russian petroleum products: one for ”premium-to-crude” petroleum products, such as diesel, kerosene and gasoline, and the other for ”discount-to-crude” petroleum products.
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