Saudi Aramco is trading close to its issue price, two months after the world’s most valuable company went public. Its fortunes are linked to crude prices, hovering at $53-54 a barrel, their lowest in a year. Mint explores how low crude prices give India a strategic advantage.
Will low oil prices help India in geopolitics?
India sources its oil from a bulk of countries, with Iraq as the biggest supplier followed by Saudi Arabia and Iran. The US has emerged as a key oil producer and is now India’s sixth-largest supplier less than three years after we started importing oil from that country. This change in India’s dependence on countries for oil reflects how oil plays an important role in geopolitics by fostering deeper economic ties between nations. The price drop gives India a chance to leverage it for getting a better bargain: for example, paying for oil imports in rupees or getting trade concessions with some of these countries.
