The global implications of India’s oil spat with Saudi Arabia

The global implications of India’s oil spat with Saudi Arabia

Good morning from Energy Source. The big news is that the Suez Canal remains blocked.

The disruption helped stop an oil price slide this week. But Brent crude was softening again on Thursday morning. At $63 a barrel on Thursday, it is down almost 10 per cent from its high this year.

But that is still too high for India. In today's first note, our South Asia correspondent Stephanie Findlay writes about the oil spat with Saudi Arabia. Our second note is on another net-zero emissions pledge, this one from the US's biggest natural gas distributor.

Thanks for reading. Please get in touch at [email protected]. You can sign up for the newsletter here. “” Derek

America moves up in the Indian oil market

The US has replaced Saudi Arabia as India's second-largest oil supplier as New Delhi makes an aggressive push to diversify its import basket following a spat with Riyadh.

India, the world's third-largest oil importer, is particularly vulnerable to rising oil prices because it imports around 80 per cent of its needs to keep its 1.4bn people moving.

Throughout the pandemic, Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government has been relying on fuel taxes to make up for a shortfall in revenue “” a move that has