Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri
Credit: PTI Photo
New Delhi: India’s highest priority is to provide energy security for its people, and it will do what it needs to do to ensure this, Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri said on Tuesday, reacting to the European Union’s sanctions on a refinery in Gujarat.
“We have been very clear that insofar as energy security is concerned, it is the highest priority of the government of India to provide energy security for the people of India, and we will do what we need to do about that,” Misri said in New Delhi, while briefing mediapersons on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to the United Kingdom on Wednesday and Thursday.
“On energy-related issues, it is important not to have double standards and to have a clear-eyed perception of what the global situation is insofar as the broader energy market is concerned,” said Misri.
The European Union recently unveiled its 18th package of sanctions to curb Russia’s earnings from its energy exports to press it into stopping its war in Ukraine.
The package included a set of sanctions on Nayara Energy Limited’s refinery in Vadinar in Gujarat, which is partly owned by Russia's Rosneft. The move is intended to curb the flow of revenues for Moscow from refined petroleum products made in a third country from crude oil from Russia.
After NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte warned India, Brazil and China against buying energy from Russia, New Delhi last week not only cautioned the West against applying "double standards" on the issue but also asserted its strategic autonomy by indicating its openness to revive trilateral talks with Beijing and Moscow.
Despite drawing flak from the US and the rest of the West, India continued to increase its imports of crude oil from Russia after the launch of the war in Ukraine, arguing that its move, in fact, was helping lessen the volatility in the global energy market.
New Delhi also pointed out that Europe had imported much more oil from Russia than India after the war started in Ukraine.