Is the US gradually turning into a major Indian crude oil supplier?
The pendulum of the price of crude oil continues to oscillate in a path that defies the existing mathematical/statistical models. The surrounding uncertainty, meanwhile, seems to be pushing the major importers to look beyond the producers closer to home, as the rising oil price has already put many developing countries in danger of slipping into a spiral of inflationary whirlpool. The rise in India’s oil imports from the US in 2020 is a case in point: despite the great distance involved and shipping costs, India, the world’s third largest consumer of the crude oil, imported 10.7 million tonnes of crude oil from the US in 2020 – almost 5.4 % of its total imports, 204 million tonnes. On the eve of the ill-fated, latest OPEC+ meeting, Dharmendra Pradhan, the former energy and petroleum minster, had a meeting with the Secretary General of the OPEC+; although what they discussed was not disclosed in public – and in full – Mr Pradhan may have raised the need of increasing the product