Oman was India’s single biggest supplier of liquefied natural gas in September, displacing the United States, which had held the top spot for months after the Iran war began. India’s imports from Oman rose 11.6 percent from August to 0.59 million tons, while imports from the United States fell 60.7 percent to 0.34 million tons, according to Kpler tanker tracking data cited by The Indian Express. Nigeria was second at 0.35 million tons, despite a 35 percent monthly decline, and the United Arab Emirates fourth at 0.31 million tons, up 27.3 percent.
The driver sits in Europe. Arbitrage economics have favoured European buyers in recent weeks, and they have taken additional American cargoes with EU gas storage at historically low levels ahead of winter. US supply that would previously have landed in India is being bid away, and Indian buyers are backfilling from suppliers outside the Hormuz bottleneck.
India has managed the shock better than its neighbours. Wood Mackenzie noted this week that India deployed a tiered demand management strategy that kept city gas distribution supplied while cutting deliveries to fertiliser, refinery and industrial users in March and April. Indian tender award prices rose from between $16.8 and $18.8 per million British thermal units in the March to June period to as much as $26.4 by September, yet tendering demand remained robust.
The September ranking is therefore a price signal as much as a logistics one. Oman can load outside the strait, Nigeria loads in the Atlantic, and both are gaining share in Asia’s largest growth market while the two biggest prewar suppliers, Qatar and the United States, are constrained by geography and by European competition respectively.