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07-02-2026
Bureau Report
NEW DELHI: When US President Donald Trump announced a trade deal with India on Monday this week, he declared that New Delhi would pivot away from Russian energy as part of the agreement.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Trump said, had promised to stop buying Russian oil, and instead buy crude from the United States and from Venezuela, whose president, Nicolas Maduro, was abducted by US Special Forces in early January. Since then, the US has effectively taken control of Venezuela’s mammoth oil industry.
In return, Trump dialed down trade tariffs on Indian goods from an overall 50 percent to just 18 percent. Half of that 50 percent tariff was levied last year as punishment for India buying Russian oil, which the White House maintains is financing Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine but since Monday, India has not publicly confirmed that it has committed to either ceasing its purchase of Russian oil or embracing Venezuelan crude, analysts note. Dmitry Peskov, a Kremlin spokesperson, told reporters on Tuesday that Russia had received no indication of this from India, either and switching from Russian to Venezuelan oil will be far from straightforward. A cocktail of other factors, shocks to the energy market, costs, geography, and the characteristics of different kinds of oil, will complicate New Delhi’s decisions about its sourcing of oil, they say.
So, can India really dump Russian oil? And can Venezuelan crude replace it?
What is Trump’s plan?
Trump has been pressuring India to stop buying Russian oil for months. After Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, the US and European Union placed an oil price cap on Russian crude in a bid to limit Russia’s ability to finance the war.
As a result, other countries including India began buying large quantities of cheap Russian oil. India, which before the war sourced only 2.5 percent of its oil from Russia, became the second-largest consumer of Russian oil after China. It currently sources around 30 percent of its oil from Russia.
Last year, Trump doubled trade tariffs on Indian goods from 25 percent to 50 percent as punishment for this. Later in the year, Trump also imposed sanctions on Russia’s two biggest oil companies and threatened secondary sanctions against countries and entities that trade with these firms.
Since the abduction of Maduro by US forces in early January, Trump has effectively taken over the Venezuelan oil sector, controlling sales cash flows.
Venezuela also has the largest proven oil reserves in the world, estimated at 303 billion barrels, more than five times larger than those of the US, the world’s largest oil producer but while getting India to buy Venezuelan oil makes sense from the US’s perspective, analysts say this could be operationally messy.
How much oil does India import from Russia?
India currently imports nearly 1.1 million barrels per day (bpd) of Russian crude, according to analytics company Kpler. Under Trump’s mounting pressure, that is lower than the average 1.21 million bpd in December 2025 and more than 2 million bpd in mid-2025.
One barrel is equivalent to 159 litres (42 gallons) of crude oil. Once refined, a barrel typically produces about 73 litres (19 gallons) of petrol for a car. Oil is also refined to produce a wide variety of products, from jet fuel to household items including plastics and even lotions.
India has reduced the amount of oil it buys from Russia over the past year, but it has not stopped buying it altogether.
