India has become the European Union’s second-largest supplier of refined petroleum products this year, RIA Novosti reported on Thursday, citing its own calculations based on the bloc’s official statistics.
According to Eurostat’s latest EU imports and exports data, the bloc bought 7.9 million tons of petroleum products from India between January and September this year, which is 2.5 times more than during the same period in 2022, RIA Novosti wrote. Compared to 2021, imports increased more than three-fold, the agency added.
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The increase saw India move up in the EU petroleum products supplier rankings, and was second only to Saudi Arabia in terms of supply volumes over the reporting period. Last year, India occupied sixth place, and was seventh in 2021.
Within the EU, France, the Netherlands, and Italy were named as the largest consumers of Indian petroleum products. Croatia, Latvia, Romania, and Germany were reported to have seen the steepest increases in imports from the South Asian nation.
India is the second-largest oil refiner in Asia after China. The South Asian country buys crude oil from a number of suppliers and refines it to make products like jet fuel and diesel.
Roughly 40% of India’s crude oil imports come from Russia, Reuters reported last month, citing tanker data from industry sources. Between April and September of this year, Russia was India’s top oil supplier, having outperformed Iraq and Saudi Arabia.
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New Delhi drastically increased purchases of discounted Russian seaborne crude after Western nations stopped buying from Moscow due to sanctions related to the conflict in Ukraine. However, EU officials have pointed out that some oil of Russian origin continues to arrive in the EU after being processed in third countries.