Russia faces difficulties: India's reduction in oil purchases leads to financial losses - SVR

Moscow offers China Urals oil at a discount of about $1.50 per barrel from Brent to resolve the situation of reduced "black gold" supplies to India. This was reported by UNN with reference to the Foreign Intelligence Service of Ukraine.

Details

The Russian Federation is cutting the price of Urals, trying to cover losses from India's withdrawal from the market and trying to reorient oil exports after a sharp reduction in supplies to India.

According to the Foreign Intelligence Service, Moscow offers China Urals oil at a discount of about $1.50 per barrel from Brent.

Context

Since July, state-owned Indian Oil Corporation and Bharat Petroleum Corporation Limited have stopped importing Russian oil. Russian minerals have been replaced by purchases of at least 22 million barrels from suppliers from the Middle East and the USA. The corresponding shipment is planned for September-October 2025.

Will China help?

An important detail: Urals is not a basic grade in the structure of Chinese imports. The reason is the remoteness of Russian ports and high logistics costs.

Therefore, Beijing will not be able to fully compensate for the lost volumes for the Russian Federation with its orders.

Chinese state-owned companies refrain from large-scale increases in purchases due to the risk of new US sanctions

In the short term, Russia will be able to replace only part of the lost Indian demand

This will be due to isolated contracts with China and smaller Asian buyers. But forced discounts on Urals will increase pressure on export earnings. And this will deepen the deficit of the Russian federal budget.

Recall

India is reducing purchases of Russian Urals oil due to the risk of US sanctions, which has led to a drop in the price of Urals.

Oil prices fell on Monday after OPEC+ agreed on another significant increase in production in September, which contributed to an increase in supply