India caught between Trump’s Iran war and his Russia pressure — a 25-day oil window that could run out
The Strait of Hormuz closure has upended India's energy calculus. With 8 weeks of reserves and a 30-day US waiver on Russian crude, New Delhi is threading an impossibly narrow diplomatic needle.
For months, Washington pressured New Delhi to cut its purchases of Russian oil — a demand India reluctantly conceded in January as part of a broader tariff deal with the Trump administration. Then, in late February, the joint US-Israeli offensive against Iran effectively closed the Strait of Hormuz, through which nearly 2.7 million barrels of India’s daily crude imports flow. India’s carefully negotiated energy compromise began to collapse almost immediately.
The US responded by issuing a 30-day waiver allowing Indian refiners to buy Russian crude currently stranded at sea — an arrangement that, as analysts have noted, directly undoes the concession India made just two months earlier. The waiver is a temporary measure that comes with limitations, conditions, and a hard deadline. It does not resolve the structural problem.
India currently holds roughly 25 days of crude oil inventory and around eight weeks of total petroleum product cover, according to its oil ministry. That buffer sounds comfortable until you factor in refinery run rates, seasonal demand, and the uncertainty about when — or whether — the strait will reopen.
State-run refiners have been hesitant to act aggressively on the Russian waiver, citing unresolved issues around payment channels, shipping insurance, and the risk of secondary US sanctions even within a waiver period. Russian barrels from earlier waivers have been snapped up more readily, thanks to established logistics — but there are limits to how quickly supply chains can be restructured.
Prime Minister Modi discussed the situation with President Trump last week, expressing support for de-escalation and calling for “restoration of peace at the earliest.” But the diplomatic language masks a more uncomfortable truth: India’s energy security is now almost entirely dependent on the outcome of a war it had no role in starting and limited leverage to stop.
