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Russian crude oil tanker Aqua Titan reaches New Mangalore port after ditching China route
The oil tanker's arrival comes just four days after reports said it, initially headed for China, made a sudden U-turn and redirected towards India
Russian oil tanker, Aqua Titan, arrived at the New Mangalore Port on Sunday morning after it reversed course in the South China Sea and ditched its travel to Beijing.
According to the ship tracker, Marine Traffic, the Cameroon-flagged vessel arrived at the port around 11:30am. This comes just four days after reports said the Russian oil-laden tanker, originally bound for China, made an abrupt turnaround in Southeast Asian waters in mid-March and began heading to India.
However, at the time, ministry of external affairs spokesperson, Randhir Jaiswal, denied answers regarding the tanker and said he would provide updates after collecting information on the same.
The following day, on March 19, Rajesh Kumar Sinha, the special secretary of the shipping ministry, said during an inter-ministerial brief that the Aqua Titan tanker, carrying crude oil, was expected to arrive at the New Mangalore Port on March 21.
Earlier this month, the Trump administration granted a 30-day "temporary" waiver to India to purchase Russian energy amid the escalating US-Iran war and the wider conflict in the Middle East.
US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said that the temporary waiver was aimed at taking off global pressure as Iran aims to "take global energy hostage," a remark that came in the wake of the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world's biggest oil chokepoints, and other surrounding issues.
Days later, Bloomberg reported that Indian refiners bought 30 million barrels of Russian oil since the US greenlit the purchases to help New India deal with the global oil crisis.
Later, US President Donald Trump also stated that he made the waiver decision to take some pressure off amid the ongoing tensions.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt later reasoned that Trump approved the waiver for New Delhi as "our allies in India have been good actors”.
“We came to this decision as our allies in India have been good actors and had previously stopped buying sanctioned Russian oil. So, as we work to appease this temporary gap of oil supply in the world because of the Iranians, we have temporarily permitted India to accept Russian oil,” Leavitt had said.
Last week, an Indian-flagged oil tanker, Jag Laadki, docked at Gujarat's Mundra Port, carrying around 80,886 metric tonnes of Murban crude oil from the United Arab Emirates. The tanker departed from the UAE's Fujairah port on March 15, a day after the terminal was attacked.
Two weeks ago, India received its first crude oil vessel, which arrived after passing through the conflict-hit Strait of Hormuz. The Liberia-flagged Shenlong Suezmax loaded crude from the Saudi port, Ras Tanura, and made a safe transit through the waterway and reached a port in Mumbai.
Besides oil tankers, two Indian-flagged vessels, Shivalik and MT Nanda Devi, carrying liquified petroleum gas (LPG), also reached India last week.
