Indian Oil, a state-run refiner, has called for initial bids on 24 million barrels from the Americas to be used in the quarter of 2026 between January and March.

According to the document, the tender is looking for both low and high sulphur crude oils.

Industry sources say that many Indian refiners have halted new orders of Russian oil since the U.S. sanctions were imposed last week against Moscow's two largest producers. Some have turned to the spot markets for alternative supplies.

Indian Oil, India's largest refiner, wants to gauge interest from the market in case it has to purchase oil from the Americas. A source familiar with the tender said this.

Source: The bid will end on Friday.

Separately IOC purchased 2,000,000 barrels of West African crude oil from ExxonMobil through a tender held on Wednesday, according to trade sources.

They added that the purchase was made for Mondo, from Angola, and Utapate, from Nigeria.

India has become the largest importer of Russian crude oil by sea in the wake of Moscow's invasion of Ukraine 2022. (Reporting and editing by Himani Sarkar, Christian Schmollinger and Florence Tan; Additional reporting and Siyi LIu by Florence Tan)

(source: Reuters)