India, the world\u2019s third biggest crude importer, announces measures amid shortages created by the Iran war.<\/p>\n
Published On 27 Mar 202627 Mar 2026<\/p>\n
India has lowered fuel taxes in a bid to protect consumers from rising global energy prices \u2013 a result of the United States and Israel\u2019s war on Iran.<\/p>\n
Petroleum Minister Hardeep Singh Puri said in a post on X on Friday that authorities were forced to choose between drastically increasing fuel prices amid the crisis or taking a \u201chit on its own finances\u201d to protect buyers.<\/p>\n
Recommended Stories list of 4 itemsend of list<\/p>\n
Petrol duties were slashed from 13 rupees ($0.14) per litre (0.26 gallon) to 3 rupees ($0.032) per litre, according to a government order on Thursday. Similarly, the 10-rupee (0.11) per litre duty on diesel will be completely removed.<\/p>\n
Oil prices have surged past $100 per barrel following Iran\u2019s near-closure of the Strait of Hormuz after Israel and the US launched attacks on February 28.<\/p>\n
India is the world\u2019s third largest crude importer and a net exporter of refined products. New Delhi gets about 40 percent of its crude via the passageway, but authorities say there\u2019s \u201cno shortage\u201d amid the war, and that current reserves will cover 74 days.<\/p>\n
Singh also debunked rumours of an impending lockdown as a result of the energy crisis, saying they are \u201ccompletely false\u201d and that India is \u201cresilient\u201d.<\/p>\n
It is unclear whether pump prices will change for ordinary consumers. Analysts say oil companies previously selling at a loss will be the ones to benefit from the tax cuts.<\/p>\n
Speaking to Reuters, Madhavi Arora, an economist at Emkay Global, estimated the annualised fiscal hit at nearly 1.55 trillion rupees ($16.3bn).<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, finance authorities reimposed export taxes on diesel and aviation fuel, raising them to 21.5 rupees ($0.23) and 29.5 ($0.31) rupees per litre respectively, after previously scrapping them in 2024.<\/p>\n
India exported 14 million metric tonnes of gasoline and 23.6 million tonnes of gasoil between April 2025 and January 2026, mostly via the private company, Reliance Industries.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"India, the world\u2019s third biggest crude importer, announces measures amid shortages created by the Iran war. Published On…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":548287,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3995,4868,1872,2420,2344,801,803,129,3,45063,3733,21,19,22,20,25,231941,24],"class_list":["post-548286","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-asia","tag-business-and-economy","tag-energy","tag-government","tag-india","tag-iran","tag-israel","tag-middle-east","tag-news","tag-oil-and-gas","tag-tax","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-us-israel-war-on-iran","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548286","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=548286"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548286\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/548287"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=548286"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=548286"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=548286"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}