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India’s GreatestVulnerability

Show Me Of India’s Oil
ONE
Barrel Of Oil
One Barrel

Barrel
Second
Minute
Hour
Day
Month
Year
Drag · Click

THE COST OF OIL

How Exposed Are They?

( Consumed − Produced ) ÷ Consumed
Crude Oil Price
$70
The Only Assumption Here. Everything Else Is Measured.
Dependency
0%100%
Net Exporter    Not In This Data

THE WORLD’S TRADE CHOKEPOINTS

Twenty-Eight Gates On Earth. Only A Handful Decide Whether India Gets Its Oil.

If The Red Sea Were
Share Of India’s Crude That Must Pass
0%55%
Carries India’s Oil
On The Route, Share Unknown
Carries None Of It — Click To Explore

BUT, WHAT IF THE HORMUZ SHUTS?

Brent Crude, Daily, Since October. The Market Priced A War — Then Priced A Peace.

India’s Crude That Has Had To Cross Hormuz
Since The War Began
0
24.3 Barrels Every Second — 137 Days And Counting
Of Which $0 Had To Be Replaced During The 106 Days The Strait Was Shut — Priced At What Brent Actually Closed At, Each Day
The Strait Reopened On 14 June. It Is Not Fully Back: About 34 Ships A Day Now Transit It, Against A Normal 88. The Dependence Does Not Pause — It Runs Whether The Strait Is Open Or Not.

INDIA’S CRUDE PIVOT TO RUSSIA

Every Month, 2019 To 2026. Watch Russia Appear Out Of Nothing.

WHEN INDIA PAID $150 FOR A BARREL

A Term Contract Is A Promise About Price. It Is Not A Promise About Delivery. In April 2026, India Found Out What That Means.

You End Up On Spot Whether You Planned To Or Not. 45% Of India’s Crude Loads Inside The Strait — Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, The UAE. When It Shuts, The Contracts Do Not Fail Because Anyone Broke Them. They Fail Because The Ship Cannot Move. Futures Are Ours — They Are On The Chart Two Slides Back. The ~$150 Physical Price, The Freight And The Insurance Are From Market Reporting. We Have Not Verified Them Ourselves.

THE CURRENCY HAMMERED

Crude Is Priced In Dollars. India Earns In Rupees.

Why Oil Drags The Rupee Down
1
India Must Buy DollarsCrude Is Invoiced In Dollars. A Bigger Bill Means Indian Refiners Sell Rupees And Buy Dollars In Size. More Sellers Mean Cheaper Rupees.
2
The Trade Deficit WidensOil Is India’s Largest Single Import. When It Costs More, More Money Leaves The Country Than Comes In. Deficits Drag The Rupee Down.
3
Money Runs For CoverAn Oil Shock Is A War Shock. Foreign Investors Pull Money Out Of Emerging Markets Into The Dollar. Those Outflows Sell Rupees Too.
4
Defending It Costs ReservesThe RBI Can Sell Dollars To Slow The Fall, And It Has. But Reserves Are Finite, And Spending Them Is Not Fixing It.
This Is The Standard Mechanism, Not A Claim About Any Particular Week. The Rupee Also Moves For Reasons That Have Nothing To Do With Oil.

WHAT A BARREL COSTS YOU

Move Either Slider. This Is Multiplication, Not A Forecast.

Crude, Per Litre ₹41.73 Before Refining. Before Tax. Before The Pump.
Crude $69.56 A Barrel
$30$160
×
Rupee ₹95.39 To The Dollar
₹70₹110
One Barrel₹6,635
India’s Import Bill, A Day₹3,092 Cr
A Year₹11.29 Lakh Cr
A Year, In Dollars$118.3bn

WHAT IT COSTS THE COUNTRY

A Barrel Is Also A Line In The Budget. Move The Price And Watch What It Does To India’s Books — Not Yours.

$30$160
The Net Oil Bill $103.0bn Crude And Products Bought, Less Everything Refined And Sold Back
India’s Whole Deficit With The World $25.2bn Just A Quarter Of The $103bn Oil Bill. Take Oil Out, And India Runs A $78bn Surplus.
Every $10 On A Barrel $17.0bn — Barrels A Year — — Of GDP, Each Way
The Part Nobody Tells You
The Centre Taxes By The Litre

Every Component Of Central Excise On Petrol And Diesel Is Levied In Rupees Per Litre — Basic Duty, SAD, AIDC, Road Cess. Not One Is A Percentage Of The Price. Crude Can Double And The Centre Earns The Same Rupee.

₹4.76 Lakh Cr From Oil, FY26
The States Tax By The Rupee

State VAT Is Charged As A Percentage Of The Price — In All 36 States And Union Territories In PPAC’s Table, Without Exception. When Crude Rises, Their Revenue Rises With It. Automatically. Without A Decision.

₹3.42 Lakh Cr From Oil, FY26

So When Crude Doubles, The States Get Paid More And The Centre Does Not — While The Import Bill It Must Fund Doubles Anyway. It Has One Lever Left At The Pump: Cut Its Own Excise And Absorb The Loss. Which Is Precisely What The Next Slide Shows It Doing.

SO WHY DIDN’T YOUR PETROL PRICE MOVE?

Crude Doubled. The Rupee Fell. The Pump Barely Flinched. That Is Not An Accident — It Is A Decision, Made For You, Every Day.

What If Crude Costs Dictated Petrol Pump Prices?

Open CrudeShield
Tushar Gupta
PolityPolicy.com
India, in Numbers — No Rhetoric, Just Data
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Sources & Method © 2026 PolityPolicy · India, in Numbers

Sources & Method

Every figure in this piece, and where it comes from. Nothing here is modelled, forecast or smoothed. Where we assume something, the assumption is a control you can move.

The Count India burns 5.4m barrels of oil a day (PPAC / MoPNG). A year is 1,971,000,000 barrels. A barrel is 159 litres. Per-person figures use populations of 1.45bn and 342m.
The Cost Of Oil Consumption: share of a 105.13m b/d world total. Domestic supply: EIA crude & condensate, Nov 2025 — except the USA, which uses EIA total liquids (22.84m b/d), the one country where crude-only would wrongly show a net exporter as an importer. GDP: IMF 2026 nominal. 67 countries, 91.5% of all oil burned. Singapore has no polygon at world scale and is drawn as a ringed marker. The crude price is the only assumption, and it is a slider.
The World’s Trade Chokepoints Traffic: IMF PortWatch, from AIS on the UN Global Platform, yearly averages 2019–2024. Counts transits, not tonnage. India’s crude by origin: EIA Country Analysis Brief (Feb 2025), Fig 8, from Vortexa, 2023. Shares are assigned to gates by the sea route each origin must take. We do not claim how Russia’s 39% splits between its Baltic and Black Sea ports, so Gibraltar, Dover and the Bosporus carry no number. The Red Sea toggle is a hypothetical full closure — in the real Houthi episode, Russian crude bound for India did not divert.
But, What If The Hormuz Shuts? Brent spot, daily close: EIA series RBRTE via FRED (DCOILBRENTEU), 1 Oct 2025 – 6 Jul 2026. Events: war begins 28 Feb 2026; ceasefire and reopening announced 14 Jun; strikes resume 13 Jul. The counter: India’s net imports are 4,664,218 b/d, of which 45% cross Hormuz — 2,098,898 b/d, ÷ 86,400 seconds = 24.3 barrels a second. Nothing there is typed in; it is computed from the same two tables the map and the chokepoints act use. The replacement bill covers only the 106 days the strait was shut, and prices each day at the Brent that actually closed that day.
India’s Crude Pivot To Russia India’s crude imports by origin, monthly, million barrels a day, Jan 2019 – Jan 2026. In all 85 months the six origins sum to the published total; we checked every row. Nothing is smoothed.
When India Paid $150 For A Barrel The futures price is ours — it is on the previous chart. The physical price near $150, the 50–80% rise in tanker freight and the 200–300% rise in war-risk insurance are from market reporting; we have not verified them ourselves. The route is a corridor, drawn to show the water it crosses. It is not a tracked vessel.
The Currency Hammered USD/INR daily: RBI via FRED (DEXINUS). Both lines are the same crude, indexed to 100 on 1 Oct 2025. The import bill uses 4.66m b/d of net crude imports — crude only, not refining, taxes or the pump. The four reasons are the standard mechanism, not a claim about any particular week.
What A Barrel Costs You Crude ÷ 159 litres × the rupee. Nothing else. This is the crude in a litre of fuel — before refining, before excise, before VAT, before the dealer’s margin. It is multiplication, not a forecast, and it is why the pump price does not move the way this number does.
What It Costs The Country Oil trade, FY2025–26: PPAC, Import/Export of Crude Oil and Petroleum Products — crude imports $123.379bn, all oil imports $144.174bn, refined product exports $41.138bn, net oil bill $103.036bn. India is a large exporter of refined fuel, and the net figure subtracts every barrel of it. Current account deficit $25.2bn (RBI, FY26). Merchandise trade deficit $333.19bn (Commerce Ministry). Contribution of the petroleum sector to the exchequer, 2025–26 (P): Centre ₹4,75,719 crore, States ₹3,41,821 crore (PPAC). The Centre’s fiscal deficit ₹15.19 lakh crore (CGA). That central excise is specific (₹/litre) and state VAT is ad valorem (%) is read straight off PPAC’s own two tariff tables. Central excise on petrol and diesel is levied entirely in rupees per litre — basic duty, SAD, AIDC and the road cess; not one component is a percentage. State VAT is a percentage of the price in all 36 states and union territories PPAC lists, without exception. The $10-a-barrel figure is 4,664,218 b/d × 365 × $10 = $17.0bn, our own net-import number annualised. Two caveats, plainly: PPAC counts oil on a customs basis and the RBI counts the current account on a balance-of-payments basis — they are not the same standard, so the 4.1× is a statement about scale, not a reconciliation of ledgers. And moving the price dial holds volume fixed; that is an assumption, and it is the only one on the slide.
What we will not do We do not model. No price forecasts, no demand response, no fitted relationships. Where a number could not be sourced, it is left blank rather than guessed. Where we made an error, we corrected it on the page.