India’s crude oil imports from Russia surged in March 2026, on a monthly basis, as State-run refiners more than doubled their purchases of the geo-politically sensitive commodity from Moscow.

According to Finland-based Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA), Russia is heavily reliant on Asian markets to sell its oil with 90 per cent of its total exports of crude oil delivered to China and India in the first quarter of 2026.

“India’s imports of Russian crude oil doubled month-on-month. The biggest shift was in State-owned refineries’ imports from Russia, which saw a massive 148 per cent increase (m-o-m), presumably due to Russian barrels being more available in the spot market, which serve as their primary source of imports,” CREA pointed out.

According to global real time data and analytics provider Kpler, India roughly imported around 1.98 mb/d of crude oil from Russia in March compared to around 1 mb/d in February 2026.

India was the second-highest buyer of Russian fossil fuels in March 2026, importing a total of €5.8 billion of Russian hydrocarbons. Crude oil products constituted 91 per cent of India’s purchases, totalling €5.3 billion. Coal (€337 million) and oil products (€178.5 million) constituted the remainder of their monthly imports, CREA said.

While India’s total crude imports recorded a 4 per cent m-o-m reduction in March 2026, Russian imports doubled. The biggest shift was in state-owned refineries’ imports from Russia. Their imports were in fact 72 per cent higher than March 2025, presumably due to Russian barrels being more available in the spot market, which serves as the primary source of imports for them, it added.

The state-owned New Mangalore (Mangalore Refinery and Petrochemicals) and Visakhapatnam (Hindustan Petroleum Corporation) refineries had stopped Russian imports at the end of November 2025, but purchases resumed in March 2026.

Private refineries, meanwhile, registered a more modest 66 per cent month-on-month increase, but remained lower than the same time last year, it said.

Despite the EU’s ban on imports of oil products made from Russian crude on 21 January 2026, 14 shipments of oil products from refineries, including Indian, using Russian crude—and identified as high risk according to EU guidance—have unloaded at EU ports in the month of March, CREA said.

Nine of these shipments departed from Turkey’s refineries, four from India and one from Georgia. Some shipments from refineries running on Russian crude unloaded oil products at multiple European ports. France was the largest recipient of shipments from these refineries running on Russian crude, unloading four shipments in March, followed by Cyprus (three shipments), it added.

“Refineries in India, Turkiye, Brunei, and Georgia that use Russian crude exported €830 million of oil products to sanctioning countries in March 2026. The importers included the EU (€304 million), Australia (€332 million), and the US (€168 million). An estimated €188 million of these products were refined from Russian crude,” it pointed out.

The US’s imports came from the Jamnagar refinery in India and the STAR refinery in Turkiye, owned by SOCAR. In March, as much as 39 per cent of the STAR refinery and 25 per cent of Jamnagar refineries’ feedstock came from Russia, it added.

Published on April 14, 2026