New Delhi: Indian refineries accounted for roughly 60 percent of the diesel that moved through the Bab-el-Mandeb strait to Europe in August, at a point when Russian supply is largely missing from the market and American cargoes have begun to thin out, according to Vortexa, which provides real-time data and analytics for energy and freight.
Follow Energy Watch on X
About 200,000 barrels per day of diesel, or gasoil, passed through the chokepoint in August aboard vessels headed for Europe. That is close to where the route stood a year earlier, and it follows a period in March and April when traffic through it came almost to a halt. With India supplying about three-fifths of the volume, its refiners have become a significant part of Europe's eastern supply line, Vortexa said in a report.
India has the refining base to play that role. It ranks as the world's fourth-largest refiner, with 258.1 million tonnes per annum of installed capacity, comfortably ahead of what the domestic market consumes. That surplus goes abroad: exports of petroleum products came to 61.5 million tonnes in 2025-26, the fiscal year running from April 2025 to March 2026, placing India among the world's biggest suppliers of refined fuels. Those barrels are now reaching both Europe and Russia.
Whether the flow holds is the open question. Crude and condensate arrivals into India slipped for a second month running in August, to about 3.8 million barrels per day, against 4.8 million barrels per day in the same month a year earlier, Vortexa data showed.
Russia used to be a mainstay of Europe's diesel supply, and it has stayed off the board. Its seaborne diesel and gasoil exports averaged only about 150,000 barrels per day over the first 25 days of August. That is roughly 610,000 barrels per day below the year-earlier figure, and 81 percent under the five-year seasonal average, according to Vortexa.
Nor is the scheduled easing of Russia's diesel export ban from September 1 likely to reverse that quickly. Ukrainian drone strikes have gone on hitting Russian refining and export assets, with 32 attacks on refineries logged across July and August. One of them left the 260,000 barrels per day Perm refinery running at only about 28 percent of its crude distillation capacity, on data cited by Vortexa.
Export terminals have taken damage alongside the refineries. The Black Sea handled about 44 percent of Russian diesel and gasoil exports last year, some 380,000 barrels per day, and that capacity has been eaten into by disruption at both ports and plants. Tuapse has shipped no diesel cargoes since it was struck in May, according to Vortexa. The port moved about 90,000 barrels per day in 2025, close to a tenth of Russia's diesel exports.
Losing refining capacity at home has pushed Russia the other way in gasoline. Its seaborne gasoline imports hit a record of roughly 125,000 barrels per day in August, working out to about 470,000 tonnes over the month. Around 55 percent of that came in on sanctioned tonnage, and India, Turkey and Morocco were among the countries supplying it.
The Indian gasoline, or petrol, cargoes that went to Russia in August moved on sanctioned fleets and changed hands through ship-to-ship transfers in the Mediterranean. Sanctions, refinery outages and the breakdown of established trade routes are between them redrawing how refined products enter and leave the region.
For Europe, though, it is diesel where India counts most, because the other source of incremental barrels is pulling back at the same time. The United States (US) met about half of Europe's seaborne diesel imports from outside the region in August, around 520,000 barrels per day, up from roughly a quarter a year earlier.
That headline share conceals a slide inside the month. US shipments to Europe topped out at almost 540,000 barrels per day in the first half of August before dropping to about 350,000 barrels per day in the second, a fall of roughly 35 percent. European buyers are therefore relying more heavily on Indian refiners to keep the eastern route supplied, at the very moment crude availability in India is getting tighter.
The Strait of Hormuz is not making up the difference. Medium-range (MR2) and larger tankers carrying clean products made only 37 crossings in the first 27 days of August, down from 55 in July and 69 in June.
Ship-to-ship transfers off Oman have carried on, but the cargo moving that way is mostly crude rather than refined product. Clean products originating west of Hormuz and transferred offshore Oman came to about 230,000 barrels per day in the first three weeks of August, against roughly 400,000 barrels per day over the same weeks in June.
What all of this leaves is a narrower set of suppliers into Europe. Russian volumes remain depressed even with the current ban due to expire, US flows have started to fall away, and Hormuz is adding little product. India is carrying a larger share of the load as a result, according to Vortexa.
Follow Energy Watch on LinkedIN
The timing is awkward. Europe is heading into its peak winter diesel season with inventories already low, and refineries on both sides of the Atlantic are due for autumn maintenance after a stretch of high run rates. There is not much slack left for anything to go wrong.