August 22, 2026: Switch to focused listIndia is widen­ing its crude oil sourcing to Latin Amer­ica as dis­rup­tions linked to the Iran con­flict and the Strait of Hor­muz push the world’s third-largest oil con­sumer to diver­sify sup­plies, ship track­ing data showed.

Indian crude imports from Venezuela have risen sharply in August, mak­ing the South Amer­ican coun­try the fourth-largest sup­plier of India, accord­ing to Kpler’s ship-track­ing data. Venezuelan sup­plies reached about 444,000 bpd, ahead of Iraq’s 118,000 bpd & the US’ 153,000 bpd, the data showed.

Venezuela’s pos­i­tion in India’s sup­ply mix has risen rap­idly since imports resumed in April. Indian refiners hiked pur­chases of Venezuelan, Brazilian and African crude after dis­rup­tions to Middle East­ern sup­plies, while con­tinu­ing to rely heav­ily on Rus­sian oil.

Rus­sia remains the dom­in­ant sup­plier, with imports close to 2 mil­lion bpd in

August. Rus­sian crude imports reached around 2.6 mil­lion bpd in June-July, account­ing for more than half of India’s crude intake and effect­ively provid­ing a hedge against dis­rup­tion to tra­di­tional Middle East­ern sup­ply routes.

“India’s strategy is increas­ingly oper­at­ing on sev­eral fronts at once: increas­ing domestic upstream pro­duc­tion where pos­sible, diver­si­fy­ing over­seas crude sup­pli­ers and trans­port­a­tion routes, build­ing stra­tegic and com­mer­cial invent­or­ies, and accel­er­at­ing altern­at­ives such as gas, bio­fuels, EVs and renew­ables,” said Sumit Rit­o­lia, Senior Man­ager - Mod­el­ling at Kpler.

The shift high­lights a broader strategy emer­ging from the dis­rup­tion: India is not mov­ing away from oil in the near term, but is seek­ing to make the crude it still needs more secure and resi­li­ent by widen­ing its sup­plier base and trans­port­a­tion options.

That reflects a key fea­ture of India’s cur­rent energy-secur­ity strategy: repla­cing Middle East­ern bar­rels entirely is neither prac­tical nor neces­sar­ily eco­nom­ical, Rit­o­lia said.

Gulf pro­du­cers remain geo­graph­ic­ally closer to India, redu­cing voy­age times and trans­port­a­tion costs com­pared with other sources such as Venezuela, the US, West Africa and Latin Amer­ica. Indian refiners have nev­er­the­less shown con­sid­er­able flex­ib­il­ity in switch­ing between Middle East­ern, Rus­sian and Atlantic Basin bar­rels.

Over­all crude imports have remained around 5 mil­lion bpd in recent months, allow­ing refinery oper­a­tions to remain rel­at­ively resi­li­ent des­pite the dis­rup­tion.

Longer voy­ages from Venezuela, the US, West Africa or Latin Amer­ica can increase freight and insur­ance costs, he said adding geo­pol­it­ical dis­rup­tion can there­fore raise India’s oil import bill.

“Diver­si­fic­a­tion helps with sup­ply secur­ity, but it can only go so far in insu­lat­ing India from geo­pol­it­ics. India will still need to import large volumes of crude, mean­ing any major dis­rup­tion will ulti­mately feed through into higher oil prices, freight and import costs,” Rit­o­lia said.

Indian refiners dra­mat­ic­ally hiked Rus­sian pur­chases as the Iran con­flict dis­rup­ted Gulf flows. Rus­sian crude accoun­ted for over half of India’s imports in July, while sup­plies from the Middle East fell to about 30 per cent of the coun­try’s import bas­ket dur­ing AprilJuly, from 43 per cent a year earlier. Latin Amer­ican sup­plies, includ­ing Venezuela & Brazil, rose to 12.7 per cent over the same period from 3.5 per cent.

(Source: Millenium Post)