OREANDA-NEWS   By the end of July, India bought a record amount of oil from Russia — an average of 2.08 million barrels were supplied per day. This is reported by Reuters with reference to data from analysts of the Definitive company.

Russia has been actively selling raw materials to Indian and Chinese refineries for many months in a row. Experts explain the demand for Russian supplies primarily by the fact that the main Russian export grade Urals is traded at large discounts to the reference brand Brent.

However, China in July, on the contrary, reduced daily purchases of Russian raw materials to 2.04 million barrels. One of the main reasons for such dynamics was the decision of the Russian authorities to reduce the volume of domestic oil production. Since March, they began to reduce production by 500 thousand barrels per day to the average level of February, and then extended this measure until the end of 2024. In total, by the end of July, Asian countries purchased record volumes of oil abroad — imports amounted to 27.92 million barrels per day. The region has been setting import records for several months in a row — the previous highs were recorded in June and May (27.35 million and 27.53 million barrels per day, respectively).

Earlier, Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak said that Russia plans to reduce crude oil exports in September by 300 thousand barrels per day. At the same time, he did not specify about what period the decline should occur. For comparison, by the end of August, Moscow expects to reduce the shipment of raw materials to foreign buyers by an additional 500 thousand barrels — that is, by a million barrels per day to the average level of February.