On September 2, 2025, Saudi Aramco and Iraq’s state oil company SOMO stopped selling crude oil to India’s Nayara Energy after the European Union placed sanctions on Nayara in July 2025. Nayara is partly owned by Russian companies, including Rosneft.
Shipping data and industry experts say that in August, Nayara relied only on Russian oil for its imports. Nayara controls about 8% of India’s refining capacity, which is 5.2 million barrels per day. It usually receives 2 million barrels of crude oil per month from Iraq and 1 million barrels from Saudi Arabia. But in August, no shipments came from these two countries, according to data from Kpler and LSEG.
The last shipment of Basra crude from Iraq arrived on July 29 at Vadinar port on a ship called Kalliopi. The last shipment from Saudi Arabia, 1 million barrels of Arab Light and Basrah Heavy, came on July 18 on a ship named Georgios, according to LSEG.
Saudi Arabia and Iraq aren’t shipping any crude to Nayara Energy’s refinery in western India after it was sanctioned by the European Union https://t.co/krHb6s8veU
— Bloomberg (@business) September 1, 2025The EU sanctions have caused payment problems for Nayara’s purchases from SOMO, two sources said, but did not give more details. Due to these difficulties, Nayara’s refinery in Vadinar, which can process 400,000 barrels per day, is running at 70–80% capacity because it is having trouble selling its products.
Nayara has also faced problems shipping fuel because many carriers stopped working with them. To ship fuel, they have had to use “dark fleet” ships, according to shipping reports. A Russian Embassy official in New Delhi said Nayara now gets direct oil supplies from Rosneft.
In July 2025, Nayara’s CEO resigned. Recently, the company hired a senior executive from Azerbaijan’s SOCAR as the new CEO to manage these challenges.
