India is the world's third-biggest oil importer and consumer, importing more than 80% of its oil needs. Indian refiners had placed orders in May for most of the June-arrival oil barrels.
Refiners in India together shipped in 1.98 million barrels per day (bpd) of Russian oil in June, down 3.7% from the previous month, the data showed. However, during the first fiscal quarter ended June 30, India's imports of Russian oil rose by an annual 1.2%, according to the data.
Russia exported more crude in the June quarter due to outages at its refineries from Ukrainian drone attacks, a trader with an Indian refiner said, but added that supply is expected to fall in the September quarter.
Indian refiners have been gorging on Russian oil, which emerged as an additional outlet after being sold at a discount, following western nations curtailing their purchases and imposing a raft of sanctions against Moscow for invading Ukraine.
Indian refiners have already moderated purchase of oil from some traditional Middle Eastern producers who raised prices earlier this year, with imports from Iraq in June falling to their lowest since September 2020, data showed.
Indian refiners received 762,400 bpd of Iraq oil in June, down about 24% from May and 14.6% from a year earlier, data showed.
"It's partly because they (Iraq) does not have extra barrels to allocate," the trader said, adding that Russian supply was also readily available.
Earlier this month, Iraq's oil ministry affirmed its commitment to OPEC's Declaration of Cooperation (DoC) agreement, saying it will compensate for any oil overproduction since the beginning of 2024.
India's monthly oil imports from Saudi Arabia, however, rose 9.7% after a decline to 10-month-low levels in May, the data shows.
Iraq continued to be the second largest oil supplier to India, followed by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. The U.S. emerged as the fourth largest supplier to India.
Imports from Russia have dented the share of Middle Eastern oil in India's crude basket, dragging OPEC's share to the lowest.
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