India’s crude oil imports from the US have jumped by over 72 per cent in the first five months of the current fiscal as the country looks to diversify oil purchases beyond its traditional suppliers in the Middle East, official data showed.
According to data sourced from the Directorate General of Commercial Intelligence and Statistics, the US supplied about 4.5 million tonnes of crude oil during April to August 2019 as compared to 2.6 million tonnes oil sourced from that country in the same period a year back.
Iraq continues to be India’s top crude oil supplier, meeting close to one-fourth of the country’s oil needs. Iraq sold 21.24 million tonnes of crude oil to India from April to August, almost 12 per cent more than 18.99 million tonnes it had supplied in the same period of the previous fiscal.