Oil prices rallied more than 3% on Thursday, building on the previous session’s gains, after India signaled it may reassess its Russian crude purchases in response to fresh U.S. sanctions targeting Rosneft and Lukoil.
By 06:14 GMT, Brent crude futures had gained $2.12, or 3.4%, to $64.71 per barrel, while U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude futures were up $2.09, or 3.6%, at $60.59.
The U.S. warned it was prepared to take additional measures as it urged Moscow to agree to a ceasefire in its war against Ukraine. Last week, the U.K. imposed its own sanctions on Rosneft and Lukoil, while EU countries approved a 19th sanctions package, including a ban on imports of Russian LNG.
“President Trump’s fresh sanctions hitting Russia’s biggest oil houses aim squarely at choking Kremlin war revenues – a move that could tighten physical flows of Russian barrels and force buyers to re-route volumes onto the open market,” said Phillip Nova’s senior market analyst Priyanka Sachdeva.
Immediately after the sanctions were unveiled, Brent and WTI futures spiked more than $2 a barrel, with prices also supported by an unexpected drop in U.S. inventories.
“If New Delhi trims purchases under U.S. pressure, we could see Asian demand pivot toward U.S. crude, lifting Atlantic prices,” Sachdeva added.
According to industry sources, Indian refiners are preparing to sharply reduce imports of Russian crude following the new measures. India has emerged as the largest buyer of discounted Russian seaborne crude since Moscow’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, taking in around 1.7 million barrels per day in the first nine months of 2025.
Two people familiar with the matter said privately owned Reliance Industries — India’s top buyer of Russian oil — intends to scale back or even halt purchases entirely.
Indian state-owned refiners generally don’t buy directly from Rosneft or Lukoil, relying instead on intermediaries for most transactions, trade sources added.
Still, skepticism in the market limited the upside for crude, as some questioned whether the new U.S. sanctions would materially shift supply-demand balances.
“The new sanctions are certainly upping the ante between US and Russia but I see the oil price jump more like a knee-jerk reaction by the markets rather than a structural shift,” said Rystad Energy’s global market analysis director, Claudio Galimberti.
“So far, almost all the sanctions against Russia for the past 3.5 years have mostly failed to dent either the volumes produced by the country or the oil revenues,” he noted, adding that Indian and Chinese buyers have largely kept their flows intact.
Looking ahead, traders are monitoring potential supply increases from OPEC+ as production cuts are unwound, which could weigh on prices in the near term.
“The three factors I will be watching going into Nov are OPEC+ unwinding, China’s crude stockpiling, and the wars in Ukraine and Mid-east, in this order,” said Galimberti.
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