New Delhi: Signalling compliance with US and EU measures targeting trade in Russian oil and derived products, Reliance Industries said it has stopped importing the commodity into its export-oriented refinery and that it is honouring commitments to lifting such crude made up to the day Washington announced its sanctions last month.

Washington's sanctions against Russian oil majors Rosneft and privately held Lukoil as well as a number of their subsidiaries are to kick in on Friday (November 21). While announcing them on October 22, it had also threatened secondary sanctions against foreign firms “engaging in certain transactions involving” the entities.

A spokesperson for Reliance said it would honour commitments to lifting Russian oil made up to October 22 as transport arrangements were already made by then.

“Any cargoes arriving on or after November 20 will be received and processed at our refinery in the Domestic Tariff Area. All operational activities ordinarily incident to such oil supply transactions can be completed, we believe, in a compliant way,” the spokesperson said on Thursday.

Reliance has been the single-largest consumer of Russian oil in India, whose sustained purchases of the commodity despite Moscow's unrelenting invasion of Ukraine was cited by the Donald Trump administration as its reason for doubling tariffs on Indian goods from 25% to 50%.

Meanwhile, the conglomerate also said it had stopped importing Russian oil into its export-oriented SEZ refinery with effect from Thursday in view of “product-import restrictions coming into force on January 21 2026”, a reference to the EU's 18th sanctions package against Russia.

“From December 1, all product exports from the SEZ refinery will be obtained from non-Russian crude oil. This transition has been completed ahead of schedule to ensure full compliance with product-import restrictions coming into force on January 21, 2026,” Reliance's spokesperson said on Thursday.

They added that the SEZ refinery is a “fully segregated facility”.

Brussels's 18th sanctions package announced in July, also in response to the Ukraine war, will restrict the import of refined petroleum products made from Russian crude oil into the union from a third country, with some exceptions, from January 21, 2026.

The EU will allow imports from refineries that can segregate and separately process Russian oil as long as they prove that the petroleum products they are shipping to Europe ‘come from the production line using non-Russian oil’.

If a refinery cannot segregate Russian oil, it can still import petroleum products if “evidence is provided by the third party that no Russian crude has been received or processed in the production line over the past 60 days prior to the bill of lading date of the cargo at issue”. Thursday is almost exactly two months prior to the date when Brussels's import restrictions are to go into effect.

A large share of the Russian oil India imports is processed in domestic refineries and exported to Europe as diesel and jet fuel. At Reliance's Jamnagar refinery alone 17 billion euros worth of refined fuels made from Russian crude were exported to the EU between February 2023 and July 2025.

Reliance's decisions come around a year after it signed a ten-year deal with Rosneft in December last year which entailed daily sales of close to five lakh barrels of crude.

In a statement issued to the Washington Post, the White House press office said that Reliance's move is a “step in the right direction”.

Washington “views this decision by Reliance to comply with sanctions, and broader movements by India to diversify away from Russian crude purchases, as a step in the right direction. We welcome this shift and look forward to advancing meaningful progress on US-India trade talks,” the newspaper quoted the White House as saying.

After Trump had claimed last month that Prime Minister Narendra Modi had agreed to stop buying Russian crude, the Ministry of External Affairs said it was looking to ‘diversify’ its energy sourcing in what has been viewed as a signal that New Delhi is moving away from Russia as its biggest source of crude imports since the start of the Ukraine war.

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