Gujarat’s Vadinar, where Russia’s Rosneft-based Nayara Energy has a 20 million tonne a year refinery.
| Photo Credit: Reuters
Billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries Ltd is estimated to have earned €724 million (about ₹6,850 crore) from exporting fuel made from Russian crude oil to the US in one year, an European think tank said in a report.
“From January 2024 to the end of January 2025, the US imported €2.8 billion of refined oil from six refineries in India and Turkey that process Russian crude. An estimated €1.3 billion of this was refined from Russian crude,” the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA) said in a report.
US imported €2 billion worth fuels such as petrol and diesel from Jamnagar in Gujarat, where Reliance’s twin oil refineries. Of this, “€724 million (is) estimated to be refined from Russian crude,” it said.
Gujarat’s Vadinar, where Russia’s Rosneft-based Nayara Energy has a 20 million tonne a year refinery, exported €184 million worth of fuel to the US between January 2024 and January 2025. Of this, €124 million is estimated to be refined from Russian crude, CREA said.
New Mangalore, where Mangalore Refinery and Petrochemicals Ltd (MRPL) has a unit, exported €42 million worth of fuel to the US, of which €22 million is estimated to be refined from Russian crude, it said.
An e-mail sent to Reliance for comments remained unanswered.
Turkey’s three refineries exported a total of €616 million worth of fuel to the US, of which €545 million is estimated to have come from refining Russian crude.
“Russia has earned an estimated ₹750 million in tax from these imports (from India and Turkey) to the US,” CREA said. “The imports consist of gasoline (petrol) valued at €294 million, which ends up in American cars. By our rough estimate, US imports of gasoline made from Russian crude could fill up almost every car in Florida.”
As one third of the Russian federal budget is comprised of revenue from fossil fuel exports, sanctions are the key to ending the invasion, while simultaneously also gaining the upper hand in negotiations towards an equitable and acceptable peace for Ukraine, it added.
While there are no restriction or sanctions on buying/using Russian crude oil and exporting fuels such as diesel derived from it, the Group of Seven (G7) rich nations, the European Union and Australia – called the price cap coalition countries – first set a crude price cap of USD 60 per barrel starting December 5, 2022 and later on products like diesel to keep market supplied while limiting Moscow’s revenue.
This was aimed at punishing Russia for its February 2022 invasion of Ukraine by depriving it of oil revenues while averting a surge in prices that could occur if Russian oil stopped flowing to global markets.
Published – March 18, 2025 03:37 pm IST
