Mumbai, Jan 7 (UNI) Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) today officially announced that it has not received any Russian crude oil and none are expected in January 2026, denying reports which appeared in a section of the media recently.
“A news report in Bloomberg claiming that ‘three vessels laden with Russian oil are heading for Reliance Industries Limited’s Jamnagar refinery’ is blatantly untrue,” Reliance Industries said in a statement here.
“Reliance Industries Ltd Jamnagar refinery has not received any cargo of Russian oil at its refinery in the past three weeks, and it is not expecting any Russian crude oil deliveries in January 2026. We are deeply pained that those claiming to be at the forefront of fair journalism chose to ignore the denial by RIL of buying any Russian oil to be delivered in January and published a wrong report tarnishing our image,” the official statement mentioned.
A recent Bloomberg report had claimed that Reliance had earlier stopped using Russian crude oil at the export-focused part of its refinery after US sanctions on Russian oil companies Rosneft and Lukoil, but had allegedly resumed buying from Russian suppliers who are not under sanctions to supply fuel meant for India’s domestic market.
Earlier, Reliance used to be the largest Indian importer of Russian crude petroleum, importing around half a million barrels per day for Jamnagar, as the result of a long-term supply partnership with Russian oil company Rosneft.
Reliance had purchased about half of the 1.8 million barrels per day of discounted Russian crude shipped to India before the Ukraine-Russia war which began in 2022, drawing criticism from Western nations which imposed sanctions on Russia’s petroleum exports, arguing that crude oil revenues help finance Russia’s war effort against Ukraine.
On November 20, 2025, Reliance had issued a statement that it had halted the use of Russian crude as feedstock at its export-only refinery in order to comply with European union sanctions.
“We have stopped importing Russian crude oil to our SEZ refinery with effect from November 20,” a Reliance spokesperson had stated in a statement on November 20, 2025.
“From December 1, 2025, all product exports from the Jamnagar SEZ refinery will be obtained from non-Russian crude oil,” Reliance had informed.
Reliance denies report which claimed that it imports Russian petroleum crude oil
