Washington, October 8: Union Minister of Petroleum and Natural Gas Hardeep Singh Puri has reiterated India's choice of importing oil from countries such as Russia after OPEC Plus, a consortium of oil-producing nations led by Russia and Saudi Arabia, announced a slash in oil production by two million barrels per day.
In an interaction with mediapersons in Washington DC during his ongoing US visit, Union Minister of Petroleum and Natural Gas Hardeep Singh Puri on Saturday touched on several topics, including how India will balance OPEC Plus oil production cut, diversification of energy-equity infusion, bio-fuel blending and green hydrogen.
With rising global energy requirements, the OPEC production cut is likely to impact countries such as India, the third largest oil importer.
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Speaking on balancing the imports from OPEC Plus countries as well as from the US, which is also a oil exporting country, Hardeep Puri said "If you are clear about your policy, which means you believe in energy security, energy affordability, you will buy from wherever you have to. Our energy purchases from sources hitherto unheard of, we are in discussion with them."
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Hardeep Singh Puri[/caption]
Answering how India will negotiate the tightrope of expectations, he said, "It's not a tight rope, I don't look at - We will also acquire assets outside wherever - I mean in recent months- we did $1.6 billion equity infusion which the BPCL has done in Brazil. We are looking at assets in Africa."
Puri explained that oil exporting countries needed buyers as they have to sell their products in the market. "Sometimes when you are looking at it in a journalistic manner, you would say that producers are holding all the cards. I disagree with that; I think the person or country with a large market also has a huge role to play. I am giving you a hypothetical example - If we decide to limit consumption, no matter what you produce, you will have to find a place to sell it too and I can tell you that in the last year or so, I have had my oil companies tell me that we can raise it from here, but there are traditional suppliers, this is a discussion which will go on," Puri said.
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"Much of the trade incidentally takes place in a manner which is not properly understood outside. It's not that - you have some fuels which have high density, some are lighter fuels - I don't want to get into that discussion - it may originate somewhere - we own assets outside, the product of those assets does not come to India, it goes in, it's sold in the swap market etc," he added.
This week's OPEC Plus announcement on oil production cut will likely have a cascading impact on geopolitical shifts amid the Russia-Ukraine crisis.
Meanwhile, an intense pressure campaign by the US to dissuade its Arab allies seemingly fell on deaf ears. Russia is already pumping below its OPEC ceiling, and the bulk of the cuts will be made by Gulf producers.
-PTC News with ANI inputs
