Sources said that India's Russian imports fell in January. This continued a trend that started in December, as refiners looked for alternative barrels under the pressure of Western sanctions and the ongoing U.S. India trade talks.

Donald Trump, the U.S. president announced on Monday a deal to reduce tariffs from 50% to 18% in exchange for New Delhi stopping its Russian oil purchases and lowering barriers to trade.

In recent months, Indian refiners have redrawn their crude import strategies to divert away from top supplier Russia in favor of boosting imports from the Middle East.

According to 'provisional' data from Kpler, India imported 1.215 mn bpd of Russian crude in January. Of this, the Nayara refinery accounted 0.41 mn bpd. The BPCL and IOC each took 0.58 mn bpd. Reliance did not import any Russian crude during last month.

Calculations showed that India's Russian crude oil imports were down by 12% daily compared to December last year. Calculations showed that December oil imports fell by about 22% compared to November, to 1,38 million barrels a day.

Sources said that it is unclear how much India will reduce its Russian oil imports, but any further reductions could make it more difficult for Moscow to find alternative buyers of its crude.

Two sources in the refining industry said that the Indian government has not told Indian refiners to stop purchasing Russian oil. They would need a period of time to finish the purchases they have already begun, after the recent trade agreement with Washington.

Reliance Industries Ltd., the operator of the largest refinery complex in the world, said it would buy up to 150,000 barrels of Russian oil per day from February, for its domestic market-focused refining facility, according to a company executive last week.

Indian Oil Corp., the country's biggest refiner, has pledged to buy more Brazilian crude oil in the fiscal period beginning April after reducing Russian imports.

India's reduced purchases of Russian crude oil has an impact on the freight market, since traders are increasingly using tanks to store Russia's Urals Crude at sea. (Reporting and Editing by Hugh Lawson).

(source: Reuters)