Recently, international crude oil prices have experienced a continuous decline.

Taking the WTI crude oil price as an example, the previous peak was $83.5, and many people believed that the proactive production cuts by OPEC countries would lead to a continuous rise in oil prices. However, unexpectedly, the oil prices suddenly turned and fell, and they have now returned to the position of $74.

Let's calculate, just in these two weeks, the decline has reached 11%. The situation with Brent crude oil prices is similar.

Taking advantage of a great opportunity, India made a new request to Russia.

But it was quickly rejected by Russia.

01, Price reduction?

India hoped to get a lower discount when importing Russian crude oil, which was of course rejected.

The 2022 global GDP ranking shows that India's ranking has surpassed the UK and is striving to approach Germany, ranking fifth in the world.

In this, India's oil resale transactions have contributed a lot.

After the conflict in Europe, Russia's crude oil exports to Europe were restricted.India has taken on the role of a middleman to profit from the price difference, importing crude oil from Russia at the lowest prices and then slightly processing it to sell at higher prices to Europe.

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According to data, India has imported crude oil from Russia at a price as low as $35, while China's import price is also at least above $60.

Under these circumstances, it is naturally unlikely for India to hope for a lower discount.

02, Why are the prices different?

Some netizens have raised opinions about the above data, why is there such a big price gap between China and India?

Is it because Russia treats them differently?

In fact, the reason is very simple, the quality of crude oil purchased by China and India from Russia is different, so the price is naturally different. Simply put, the quality of crude oil purchased by China is better.

The crude oil that Russia is currently exporting to India is the Urals crude oil that Europe used to prefer to import, and the price of this brand of crude oil is inherently lower.

In fact, no matter what, India was originally a country scarce in crude oil, and now it has become a country exporting crude oil, India has "turned over" in terms of crude oil.

03, Use Rupee?India's request for Russia to lower prices was not agreed upon, so it proposed a new demand, hoping to use Indian Rupees as much as possible in their trade settlements.

In fact, since last year, the two sides have completely abandoned the use of US dollars and euros in their oil trade, but most of the time they use Russian Rubles, sometimes Indian Rupees or Chinese Yuan.

But now India's idea is obviously to completely abandon the Chinese Yuan and increase the share of Rupees.

This request was immediately rejected by Russia.

Because the internationalization level of the Indian Rupee is very low at present, for Russia, selling crude oil and getting back a pile of Rupees that may not be used for a long time is meaningless.

Therefore, Russia supports increasing the share of Chinese Yuan more.

Up to here, we should understand that Russia is not particularly better to India, on the contrary, at least in terms of currency, Russia supports the Chinese Yuan more.

04, China gains more

In fact, when Russia exports oil to India and China, it does treat the transportation issues differently, but as a result, China gains more.

Due to the constraints of the price cap imposed by Western countries, Western countries do not provide any maritime transportation services for Russian crude oil.Due to the strength of China's maritime shipping capabilities, China uses its own maritime team for crude oil transportation, which is almost unaffected by external factors.

However, India is different; it does not have a strong maritime transportation team. As a result, India needs to purchase corresponding maritime services and financial insurance from Russia. The maritime services from Russia alone amount to as high as $35. Therefore, when all calculations are made, the price of crude oil that India purchases is more than $60.

In this way, it is equivalent to Chinese enterprises earning back the shipping costs, while India has no choice but to let Russia earn this income.