Global oil prices “would have hit the roof” if big importer India had not bought oil from Russia following the Ukraine war, India’s oil minister said, adding that prices would determine where the country buys oil from.

India, the world’s third largest oil importer and consumer, has become the top buyer of discounted Russian sea-borne oil shunned by Western countries since Ukraine’s invasion began in early 2022. Before that, India bought little oil from its long-running defence partner, Russia.

New Delhi has repeatedly defended its purchases from Russia as necessary to keep prices in check in the developing country of 1.42 billion people.

“What many around the world don’t seem to realise is that global oil prices would have hit the roof if India had not bought oil from Russia,” India’s oil minister, Hardeep Singh Puri, wrote on X late on Friday.

“We owe it to our citizens – India will buy oil from wherever our companies get the best rates.”

India’s crude oil imports from Russia rose by 11.7% to about 1.9 million barrels per day in September, accounting for about two-fifths of the South Asian nation’s overall crude imports in the month. Russia was followed by Iraq and Saudi Arabia as India’s biggest suppliers.

Source: Reuters reported by Krishna N. Das in New Delhi and edited by Raju Gopalakrishnan