US President Donald Trump has claimed that India will begin purchasing oil from Venezuela, shifting away from Iran, amid ongoing geopolitical and energy market realignments.
“India is coming in, and they’re going to be buying Venezuelan oil as opposed to buying it from Iran. So, we’ve already made that deal, the concept of the deal,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One on Saturday.
India has not been importing significant volumes of Iranian oil due to longstanding US sanctions that have curtailed Tehran’s exports. Instead, New Delhi turned to Russian crude after Western sanctions linked to the Ukraine war pushed prices down.
Trump’s comments come after tensions last year over India’s substantial imports of Russian oil. The US president has repeatedly urged India to curb purchases from Russia and has said Washington intends to exert long-term control over Venezuela’s oil sales and revenues following the removal of former leader Nicolás Maduro last month.
In August, as part of efforts to pressure Moscow into peace talks with Ukraine, Trump doubled tariffs on Indian exports to the US to 50 per cent, citing India’s continued imports of Russian oil. In January, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent indicated that an additional 25 per cent tariff on Indian goods could be lifted, pointing to what he described as a sharp reduction in India’s Russian oil imports.
In March, amid rising tensions with Venezuela’s new administration, Trump imposed a 25 per cent tariff on countries buying Venezuelan oil and had earlier threatened to apply the same measure to India.
This week, however, the US government eased some sanctions on Venezuela’s oil sector to facilitate crude sales by US companies. A White House official said the move would help existing supplies flow and that further announcements on sanctions relief were expected soon.
Trump’s remarks suggest an improvement in US-India relations, which had remained strained for much of the past year over trade and energy issues.
Source: Al Jazeera