Now UK steps up pressure on India, sanctions refinery in Gujarat for buying oil from Russia

'We would stress that there should be no double standards, especially when it comes to energy trade,' MEA spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said on Thursday.

New Delhi: Not only the United States, but the United Kingdom also ramped up pressure on India to cut down oil imports from Russia.

Just days after Prime Minister Narendra Modi hosted his UK counterpart Keir Starmer in Mumbai, London imposed sanctions on a refinery in India for importing 100 million barrels of crude oil worth more than $5 billion in 2024.

The UK sanctions targeted Nayara Energy Limited’s refinery in Vadinar in Gujarat. The refinery is partly owned by Rosneft of Russia.

“We have noted the latest sanctions announced by the UK. India does not subscribe to any unilateral sanctions,” Randhir Jaiswal, the spokesperson of the Ministry of External Affairs, told journalists in New Delhi on Thursday. “The government of India considers the provision of energy security a responsibility of paramount importance to meet the basic needs of its citizens,” he said.

He added that Indian companies sourced energy supplies from around the world while taking overall market conditions into account. “We would stress that there should be no double standards, especially when it comes to energy trade,” he said.

The European Union also imposed sanctions on the refinery in July this year.

The moves by the EU and the UK government are intended to curb the flow of revenues for Moscow from refined petroleum products made in a third country from crude oil from Russia.

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, circumventing sanctions on the former Soviet Union nation and arguing that its move, in fact, was helping lessen the volatility in the global energy market.

New Delhi had earlier pointed out that the European Union in 2024 had a bilateral trade of Euro 67.5 billion in goods with Russia. In addition, it had trade in services estimated at Euro 17.2 billion in 2023. The EU trade volume with Russia was significantly more than India’s total trade with President Vladimir Putin’s nation that year or subsequently. Europe’s imports of LNG from Russia in 2024, in fact, reached a record 16.5 million tonnes, surpassing the last record of 15.21 million tonnes in 2022. Europe-Russia trade includes not just energy, but also fertilisers, mining products, chemicals, iron and steel and machinery and transport equipment, the Ministry of External Affairs had argued earlier.

“We would stress that there should be no double standards, especially when it comes to energy trade,” Jaiswal, the MEA spokesperson, said on Thursday.