India will ensure domestic fuel supply despite Middle East tension
NEW DELHI: India will take measures to safeguard domestic fuel supplies, oil minister Hardeep Singh Puri said on Sunday, after U.S. attacks on Iran's nuclear sites raised the risk of disruption of Middle Eastern oil and gas and soaring energy prices.
Energy markets and investors were already on high alert since Israel launched airstrikes across Iran on June 13, fearing disruption particularly through the Strait of Hormuz.
Around 20% of global oil and gas demand flows through the Strait that Iran has long threatened to close it to exert pressure on the West.
"We have been closely monitoring the evolving geopolitical situation in the Middle East since the past two weeks... we have diversified our supplies in the past few years and a large volume of our supplies do not come through the Strait of Hormuz now," Puri said on social media platform X.
"Our Oil Marketing Companies have supplies of several weeks and continue to receive energy supplies from several routes. We will take all necessary steps to ensure stability of supplies of fuel to our citizens," he said.
India, the world's third biggest oil importer and consumer, gets less than half of its average 4.8 million barrels per day of oil imports from the Middle East.
Separately Puri told local news agency ANI that India would increase crude supplies from other sources if required. "We are in touch with all possible actors... It is our hope, and we all expect that the situation will result in calm and de-escalation rather than further escalation," he said.
Earlier in the day Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi received a phone call from Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, in which he was briefed about the conflict between Iran and Israel, India's foreign ministry said.
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