India turns to Guyana as sanctions squeeze Russian oil supplies

Credit: The Economic Times photo

Two supertankers have begun hauling crude on a lengthy and unusual voyage from Guyana to India, as refiners in the South Asian nation snap up alternatives to sanctioned Russian crude.

The journey of around 11,000 miles (17,700 kilometers) highlights the lengths to which Indian refiners are going to source non-Russian barrels after the US stepped up restrictions on the discounted oil that’s become very popular in India over the last few years.
The Very Large Crude Carriers Cobalt Nova and Olympic Lion left the South American nation in the last days of November, each loaded with about two million barrels of oil, according to ship-tracking data compiled by Bloomberg. They are due to arrive in India in January.

These are the first crude shipments from Guyana to India since 2021, when two cargoes, each of 1 million barrels, made the same journey, the tracking data show.
India had been importing about 1.7 million barrels a day of Russian oil, but US sanctions last month on Russia’s two largest exporters, Rosneft PJSC and Lukoil PJSC, have put refiners at risk if they continued with the trade. The nervousness about buying the crude also comes after US President Donald Trump doubled tariffs on all imports from India to 50 per cent in August.
The Olympic Lion is carrying a cargo of Guyana’s Golden Arrowhead crude to Paradip on the east coast of India, where state-owned Indian Oil Corp. operates a 300,000 barrel-a-day refinery. It purchased the cargo from ExxonMobil Inc. via a tender in October.

The Cobalt Nova, carrying a mixed cargo of Liza and Unity Gold grades, will likely offload in Mumbai or Visakhapatnam, where Hindustan Petroleum Corp. operates plants. The company bought one million barrels of each of those grades for delivery in late December to early January. (Bloomberg)