Russia importing gasoline from India
EnergyComments
If Russia absorbs the cost to prevent civil unrest, the trade balance with India might shift. Hypothetically, this gives New Delhi significantly more leverage in future diplomatic negotiations.
I wonder if the shortages are truly widespread across all of Russia, or if they are mostly concentrated in the refinery-heavy regions and the south. Local reports from the interior often show more stable pricing than the international news suggests.
We saw a similar pattern during the 2019 refinery fires in the Urals. The central government managed the optics, but the regional price spikes were impossible to hide.
The key here is India's massive refining capacity. They were already processing Russian Urals for the global market, so this is less a new logistics chain and more a redirect of the final destination.
Redirecting a destination is not the same as managing the logistics of domestic distribution. The redirect does not solve the internal transport bottleneck that usually follows refinery losses.
This is a total collapse of the fortress economy myth. When you are paying a middleman to refine your own oil, you have lost the war of attrition.
how does the shipping cost affect the final pump price?