US allowed India to take oil that is already on ships, refine it, move into market quickly: Wright

New York/Washington, Mar 6 (PTI) The US on Friday said it is "allowing our friends in India" to take the Russian oil already on ships around southern Asia, refine it and move the stocks into the market quickly to ensure a flowing supply and ease pressure amid the West Asia conflict.

Earlier, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said that the US has issued a temporary 30-day waiver to allow Indian refiners to purchase Russian oil.

"We have implemented short-term measures to help keep oil prices down. We are allowing our friends in India to take oil that is already on ships, refine it, and move those barrels into the market quickly. A practical way to get supply flowing and ease pressure,” Energy Secretary Chris Wright said in a post on X.

In an interview with ABC News Live, Wright said that long-term oil supplies are “abundant” and there are no worries regarding that, but in the short term, there is a need to get oil on the market.  “But as oil gets bid up a little bit because of those constraints coming out of the Strait of Hormuz, we're taking a short-term action to say all this floating Russian oil storage that's around southern Asia, it's China just backed up, China does not treat their suppliers well, so there's a bunch of floating barrels just sitting there.

"We've reached out to our friends in India and said, ‘Buy that oil. Bring it into your refineries'. That pulls stored oil immediately into Indian refineries and releases the pressure on other refineries around the world to buy oil that they're no longer competing with the Indians for in that marketplace,” Wright said.  “So we have a number of measures like that that are short-term and temporary. This is no change in policy towards Russia. This is a very brief change in policy just to keep oil prices down a little bit better than we could otherwise,” he added.

On Thursday, Treasury Secretary Bessent said the "deliberately short-term measure" will not provide significant financial benefit to the Russian government as it only authorises transactions involving oil already stranded at sea.

“India is an essential partner of the United States, and we fully anticipate that New Delhi will ramp up purchases of US oil. This stop-gap measure will alleviate pressure caused by Iran’s attempt to take global energy hostage,” Bessent said.

President Donald Trump had imposed 25 per cent punitive tariffs on India for buying Russian oil, with the administration asserting that Delhi’s purchases were helping fuel Russia’s war machine against Ukraine.  Last month, the US and India announced they reached a framework for an Interim Agreement on trade, and Trump issued an Executive Order removing the 25 per cent punitive tariffs on India, noting the commitment by New Delhi to stop directly or indirectly importing energy from Moscow and purchasing American energy products. PTI YAS ZH ZH