India’s oil shake-up: Can Venezuela really replace Russia? in Oil & Companies News 06/02/2026 Donald Trump says India has agreed to replace Russian oil with US supplies — and maybe even Venezuelan. DW asks whether the Latin American producer can realistically meet New Delhi’s needs. What oil deal have the US, India agreed? After months of pressure over India’s purchases of discounted Russian and sanctioned Iranian crude, New Delhi appears to have bowed to US President Donald Trump’s demand by agreeing to phase out Russian oil imports and shift toward buying more barrels from the United States — and potentially Venezuela. Trump claimed Monday on his Truth Social platform that Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi planned to “stop buying Russian oil,” which the US president said would help end the war in Ukraine. Russia’s energy revenues — which have financed the conflict — fell by a fifth last year, the UK’s Financial Times daily reported last week, adding to the pressure on Russian President Vladimir Putin to achieve a peace deal. Trump said India could buy $500 billion (€424 billion) worth ‌of US energy and coal, along with technology, agricultural and other products. Modi confirmed the tariff cut on the social platform X but made no mention of the oil deal. But the Reuters news agency cited an unnamed Indian government official as saying that US petroleum supplies were among the goods included in the deal. On Wednesday, Indian Trade Minister Piyush Goyal said the country would diversify its energy sources, but did not mention shifting purchases from any particular country. Trump had earlier framed the move as a part of a broader trade deal under which the US would slash its tariffs on Indian goods from 50% to 18%, while India would cut its tariffs on US products to zero. New Delhi has yet to confirm this. The US tariff rate on India had been among the world’s highest after Trump in August imposed an extra 25% levy on Indian goods as punishment for India’s oil purchases from Russia sinceMoscow’s 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The White House said the additional tariff would now be scrapped. New Delhi has already begun cutting its reliance on Russian crude following US sanctions on oil firms Rosneft and Lukoil. Last week, Indian Oil Minister Hardeep Singh Puri told news agency Bloomberg that shipments had dropped by nearly a third to 1.3 million barrels per day (bpd) in recent weeks. He said Indian oil firms were keen to increase imports from Canada and the US as part of a strategy to diversify supplies across more than 40 countries. However, Harsh Pant, a foreign policy expert at the Observer Research Foundation in New Delhi, was cited by the Financial Times as saying that an immediate shift from Russian oil was “unlikely to happen.” How quickly can Russian oil be replaced by US sources? Fully replacing Russian oil imports with US crude is likely to take several months to years, as Russian supplies make up around a quarter of the roughly 5 million bpd India imports. According to estimates from energy-tracking firm Kpler published last year, a complete pivot would raise India’s oil import bill by $9 to $11 billion annually, as Russian oil imports are heavily discounted, while US crude is more expensive. The tariff and sanctions threat has already spurred India to step up its purchases of US oil. The Times of India, an English-language daily, reported last month that US crude imports rose 92% from April to November last year. Of the