Blitz Bureau
NEW DELHI: Brent closed near $90 today, its highest since the end of July. That is the number the screens carried. The number that explains India’s year is a different one, and it is buried in the Petroleum Ministry’s quarterly data: between April and June, India spent 61 per cent more on crude oil while actually importing 4.5 per cent less of it.
Set the two figures side by side and the shape of the problem becomes plain. India’s crude import bill for the April-June quarter came to $49.8 billion on the Petroleum Ministry’s provisional data, up 61.2 per cent on the same quarter a year earlier. Over the same three months the volume of crude actually landed fell 4.5 per cent, to 59.8 million tonnes. The country did not buy more oil. It bought slightly less oil, and paid half as much again for it. Every rupee of that increase is price — the consequence of a disrupted waterway rather than of a hungrier economy. Today’s session added another layer: Brent for October settlement rose $2.14, or 2.44 per cent, to $89.86 a barrel after talks between Washington and Tehran over reopening the Strait of Hormuz reached an impasse, with each side now attaching conditions the other has rejected.
The same barrels, a different bill: India’s refiners processed a marginally smaller volume of imported crude in the June quarter and paid $49.8 billion for it.
India did not buy more oil this quarter. It bought less, and paid half as much again. The entire increase is price.
At a Glance
• Crude import bill, April-June 2026: $49.8 bn, up 61.2 per cent year on year
• Volume imported: 59.8 million tonnes, down 4.5 per cent
• Brent, October settlement: $89.86, up $2.14 or 2.44 per cent today
• Through the Strait of Hormuz: about 40 per cent of India’s crude, 60 per cent of LNG, 90 per cent of LPG
• Sourced outside the Strait: about 70 per cent of crude imports
• Supplier countries: more than 40, against about 27 a decade ago
• Rupee: 95.4450 a dollar, from 95.3050
• 10-year government bond: 6.795 per cent, from 6.766
What makes the arithmetic survivable is a decision taken long before this crisis. About 40 per cent of India’s crude, 60 per cent of its liquefied natural gas and 90 per cent of its liquefied petroleum gas normally move through the Strait of Hormuz — an exposure that on paper looks close to disabling. In practice the Petroleum Ministry reported earlier this year that roughly 70 per cent of the country’s crude was arriving from outside the Strait, and that the volume secured exceeded what would ordinarily have come through it. That was possible because India’s supplier list had been widened over a decade from about 27 countries to more than 40. Diversification is unglamorous work; it produces no announcements and shows up in no ribbon-cuttings. It is also the single reason the June quarter’s story is one of a higher bill rather than of queues at filling stations.
For the household the transmission runs through three channels, and only one of them is fast. Cooking gas is the most exposed physically but the least exposed in price, because domestic LPG is administered rather than market-linked. Transport costs feed through more slowly, into the price of everything that travels by road. And the third channel is the one visible on a dealing screen: a wider import bill pushes at the rupee, which closed at 95.4450 to the dollar against 95.3050, and at the government’s borrowing cost, with the ten-year yield rising to 6.795 per cent. None of that is a crisis at today’s levels. The constructive point is that the country’s exposure is now a question of the bill rather than of supply, and a bill can be worked down — by sourcing, by refining margins, and by the slower business of not needing the barrel at all. That last route is the subject of our Long View below.
