‘Import requires ships which are not subject to sanctions, insurance whose re-issue requires time and transit payments. Each of these issues must be resolved and we are working on it," said the spokesperson for the Ministry of Oil Pankaj Jain at an energy conference in fresh Delhi this week, quoted by Bloomberg.
The largest Indian oil companies, which shared information with the agency, estimation that they are presently short of 18-20 tankers transporting about 20 million barrels from Russia — which represents 14 percent of Indian imports — to keep their operations in the close future. By comparison, according to Bloomberg's data, 21 tankers took 16.1 million barrels of oil from all Russian ports a week until February 9. A week earlier, 29 ships had taken 21.34 million barrels on board.
Circumvention of sanctions imposed on Russia
At the margins of the conference Directors of Indian companies talked about reorganization of the supply chain with the aid of traders, tankers and insurance companies that are not on the U.S. blacklist. According to them, this is simply a question of both the usage of existing organisations that have not been affected by sanctions and the creation of fresh ones to replace those presently banned.
For example, commercial companies registered in Dubai, specified as L-Oil and Sccton, have already appeared on the market, offering supplies of Russian oil. The best managers of Indian state refineries claim to know traders behind those companies that replaced Black Pearl, Guron Trading, Demex Trading and others that were subject to US sanctions on January 10th.
However, the exchange itself will not be sufficient. The anticipation of utilizing land crude oil retention facilities to tranship Russian oil is being explored for further shipment to buyers on another tanker under the cover of natural materials, for example from the United arabian Emirates. Countries attempting to circumvent sanctions specified as Russia and Iran are well-orientated in oil handling between ships at sea, but land-based warehouses are uncommon due to the advanced cost of specified operations.
