When Prime Minister Narendra Modi told the Rajya Sabha on Tuesday that India is not dependent on any single source for its energy needs and that ships carrying oil, gas, and fertilisers are reaching India safely from multiple places, he was not making a claim that required faith. He was describing the outcome of a systematic diversification strategy that data from the US Energy Information Administration now shows in striking visual clarity.
In 2020, 61.1 percent of India’s crude oil imports passed through the Strait of Hormuz. By the first half of 2025, that figure had fallen to 33.6 percent. The same chokepoint that Iran has effectively closed since late February 2026, triggering the worst global energy crisis since the 1970s, now accounts for only one third of India’s crude import supply rather than the three fifths it represented just five years ago.
The data, compiled by Zerodha using US Energy Information Administration and Business Standard sources, shows one of the most consequential and underappreciated strategic decisions in India’s recent economic history, executed quietly over five years and now paying dividends at precisely the moment it was needed most.
The change in India’s oil import mix preceded the current crisis. pic.twitter.com/Eb3IWDceXi
— Markets by Zerodha (@zerodhamarkets) March 24, 2026
The Five Year Transformation in Full
The route diversification story breaks down into two distinct phases that the data captures clearly.
In 2020 and 2021, India’s crude import route structure was heavily concentrated. The Strait of Hormuz accounted for approximately 61 percent of imports, the Cape of Good Hope route accounted for roughly 28 to 30 percent, and the Suez Canal and Dardanelles routes together made up the remaining 8 to 10 percent. The Danish Straits route, which carries Russian crude through the Baltic Sea, was essentially zero. India had no meaningful exposure to Russian crude supply at this point.
The inflection point was 2022. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 triggered Western sanctions that made Russian crude unavailable to European buyers, simultaneously creating a massive discount on Russian crude as Moscow desperately sought alternative customers, and a supply opening for India. Indian refineries moved quickly and decisively. By the end of 2022, the Danish Straits route had gone from zero to 10.2 percent of India’s crude imports. The Suez Canal route jumped to 20 percent as Russian crude flowing from Baltic ports was rerouted through the canal and onward to India. And critically, the Hormuz share fell from 61 percent to 49.3 percent in a single year.
The process accelerated through 2023 and 2024. By 2023 the Hormuz share had fallen further to 35.2 percent while the Danish Straits route had grown to 18.8 percent and the Suez Canal route to 30 percent. By 2024 the Hormuz share settled at 32.9 percent and the Danish Straits at 19 percent, a route that did not exist in India’s import mix four years earlier. The first half of 2025 data shows stabilisation at 33.6 percent for Hormuz and 17.6 percent for Danish Straits, with the Suez Canal at 27.1 percent and the Cape of Good Hope at 13.6 percent.
The result is an import route structure with four meaningful legs rather than one dominant chokepoint. No single route now accounts for more than a third of India’s crude imports.
Why This Matters Right Now
The Strait of Hormuz has been effectively closed or severely disrupted since late February 2026. In 2020, a closure of this magnitude would have threatened approximately 61 percent of India’s crude supply simultaneously. Today, with Hormuz at 33.6 percent of the import mix, the same closure threatens roughly half as much of India’s supply as it would have five years ago.
The remaining two thirds of India’s crude import supply flows through routes that are either entirely unaffected by the Iran conflict, the Cape of Good Hope route around Africa and the Danish Straits route through the Baltic, or less severely affected, the Suez Canal route which connects to the Indian Ocean without passing through Hormuz. India’s refineries have been able to continue operating and supplying domestic markets because the 33 to 34 percent Hormuz-dependent supply, while significant, can be partially offset by increasing volumes through alternative routes and by drawing on strategic reserves.
This is precisely the buffer that Modi was describing when he told Parliament that India has enough reserves and that ships are arriving safely from multiple places. The ships arriving from multiple places are using the non-Hormuz routes that India spent five years building into its import infrastructure. The Russian crude arriving through Baltic ports and the Cape of Good Hope route, the Middle Eastern crude arriving via the Suez Canal from suppliers accessible without Hormuz transit, the West African and South American crude arriving around the Cape are all flowing because India invested the relationships, refinery configurations, and logistics infrastructure to receive them.
The Russian Crude Decision Under Scrutiny
The most politically sensitive element of India’s diversification is the Danish Straits component, which represents Russian crude. The growth from 0 percent in 2021 to 19 percent of India’s total crude imports by 2024 made India one of the world’s largest buyers of Russian crude at a time when Western countries were trying to isolate Russia economically following the Ukraine invasion.
India’s decision attracted significant criticism from Western governments and commentary from American officials about India effectively subsidising Russia’s war effort. The Indian government’s consistent response was that energy security is a national interest that cannot be compromised by geopolitical solidarity demands from countries that themselves continued buying Russian gas long after imposing oil sanctions, and that Indian consumers and the Indian economy could not be asked to bear the cost of a European security dispute.
The Hormuz crisis has provided the most powerful possible vindication of that position. The Russian crude that filled 19 percent of India’s import mix by 2024 is the crude that is keeping Indian refineries running and petrol prices stable while the Hormuz strait that used to supply 61 percent of India’s oil is effectively closed. Without that diversification, the closure of Hormuz at the 2020 dependency levels would have been an economic catastrophe for India of the first order.
What Impressively Foresighted Actually Means
The Zerodha chart carries the caption impressively foresighted beneath it, and that assessment deserves examination. Was this foresight, opportunism, or strategic necessity?
The honest answer is that it was all three simultaneously. Indian policymakers and refinery operators recognised after the Russia-Ukraine conflict that discounted Russian crude represented both an economic opportunity and an energy security asset. The decision to rapidly scale Russian crude imports was driven by the immediate economic benefit of cheap oil, but the effect was to reduce Hormuz dependency in a way that would have taken much longer to achieve through deliberate strategic planning alone. The Russia angle was the catalyst that gave India the economic incentive to accomplish in three years what a pure strategic diversification programme might have taken a decade to achieve.
The foresight was not in predicting the Iran conflict specifically. It was in recognising that over-dependence on any single supply route was a strategic vulnerability that needed to be addressed, and in moving decisively when an economic opportunity aligned with a strategic imperative. The result is an energy import infrastructure that has proven resilient through the most severe test it has faced.
India’s diversification from 61 to 33 percent Hormuz dependence did not prevent the current crisis from causing economic pain. Crude prices are still at historic highs, the Indian Crude Basket still hit $156 per barrel, the rupee still weakened to 94 against the dollar, and petrol prices are still under pressure. But the crisis that would have been manageable pain has not become an unmanageable catastrophe. That distinction is worth precisely the five years of diversification work that produced it.
Sources: US Energy Information Administration, Business Standard, Zerodha. Data covers India’s crude oil import routes from 2020 to first half of 2025. This article is for informational and educational purposes only and does not constitute financial or investment advice.
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