Stephen Finn/Shutterstock Save for later Print Download Share India is looking at stepping up its imports of US oil and gas to defuse President Donald Trump's anger over big US trade deficits with the rest of the world. However, there are limits on how much US light crude India can process. And the country's economy looks to be heading for a slowdown, with negative implications for energy demand, which won't make the task any easier. GDP growth forecasts for India have been trimmed recently as Trump's tariff threats cast a shadow over the global economic outlook, and further downward revisions could follow. Officials at India's state-controlled refining companies had been expecting India's diesel consumption to grow by 1%-2% in the current 2025/26 fiscal year, which began on Apr. 1. But that was before the recent Trump tariff announcements, when the government was projecting that the economy would grow by 6.5%. Nomura and Moody's have recently cut their GDP growth projections for this year to around 6%. Slower growth is also expected to lead to reduced gas consumption, which in turn would translate into reduced LNG imports. There is a silver lining to the economic gloom, however. A senior government official said prices for Russia's Urals crude, India's biggest import grade, have fallen to around $50 per barrel, making it easier to ship Russian crude to India on Western tankers without falling foul of sanctions.
