A growing number of Russian insurance firms, some of which sanctioned by the U.S., have applied with India’s authorities to insure tankers shipping Russian crude oil to India, according to various sources familiar with the matter.
Sberbank Insurance, which is sanctioned by the U.S., is one of the companies applying for approval to cover oil tankers docking in India, Russia’s key crude customer alongside China, sources have told Bloomberg.
Other Russian insurers seeking permits to provide protection and indemnity coverage to Russian oil tankers bound for India include Balance Insurance, Ugoria Insurance, and ASTK, according to Bloomberg’s sources.
India’s shipping authorities have already approved five insurers from Russia to cover oil tankers carrying Russia’s crude to the world’s third-largest crude oil importer.
Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the bans on Russian oil in the West, India has become a key buyer of Russian crude, alongside China. Russia, for its part, became the single biggest oil supplier to India.
As a result of the Russian flow reshuffles in the past three years and the cheaper Russian oil, OPEC’s market share in India slumped to an all-time low in the 2024-2025 fiscal year.
OPEC held a share of below 50% of India’s crude oil imports, as Russian oil flows to the world’s third-largest crude importer continued to rise and dent the share of the Middle Eastern producers.
India’s imports of crude from Russia increased by 7.3% to an average of 1.76 million barrels per day (bpd) in the 2024-2025 fiscal year ending March 31, 2025, according to data obtained and compiled by Reuters. This gave Russia a 36% share of the market of an average of 4.88 million bpd of total imports.
While the Russian share of Indian oil imports rose slightly in 2024-2025 from a year earlier and has been steadily increasing for the past three years, the share of OPEC in India’s crude purchases declined to 48.5%, an all-time low, according to the data.
By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com
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