Geography and resources are often lauded as fundamental advantages enjoyed by the United States in the international sphere. Allies and adversaries alike look jealously at the energy, food, and manufacturing capacity of the United States, nurtured by an internal geographic cohesion and protected on two sides by oceans and on two more by friendly, productive allies. Looking abroad to a world defined by great power conflict, the United States rightly spends a great deal of effort looking to even the score where the competitive ledger is most vulnerable—securing high-end technical manufacturing, shoring up specific supply chains, increasing defense industrial capacity, more aggressively pursuing military modernization, and re-posturing in core fields. There is, however, significant strategic value the United States leaves on the table while focused on its vulnerabilities—perhaps nowhere more so than in leveraging international energy markets to its competitive advantage. This paper examines current international security dynamics around energy markets, how they interact and overlap with American national security interests, and how American energy policy can, when considered holistically as an aspect of national security policy, better deter and shape adversary action.
America’s key twenty-first century adversaries—Iran, Russia, and China—all share an overreliance on international energy markets. Russia and Iran are both commodity-driven economies hemmed in by geographic constraints to their market access. China imports the vast majority of all the oil and gas required to run its economy, hemmed in often by the same constraints faced by Iran and Russia in exporting those same hydrocarbons; China is, in fact, the only continental power that finds itself reliant on sea lanes. Despite this fundamental disadvantage, the United States has not managed to meaningfully impact Russia’s ability to wage commodity-driven war despite broad sanctions since the invasion of Ukraine, limit Iran’s expansionist foreign policy for the last forty years, or deter China’s increasingly bellicose military growth and posture. This failure partially lies in looking at each of these adversaries not as part of an integrated, codependent supply chain, and partially in failing to appreciate or exploit their long-term vulnerabilities related to exposure to and overreliance on international energy markets. This paper looks to identify how American policy can better leverage international energy markets and U.S. dominance of the world’s oceans in an integrated manner to tackle national security challenges posed by all three of the United States’ major great power competitors.
It is important to note this paper intends to address and scope recommendations around the ‘lowest hanging fruit’ available to Washington today and does not explore connected and relevant areas worthy of further consideration. In a longer format, a detailed dialogue with the literature around blockade theory and its development since the turn of the twentieth century is called for, but is outside the scope of this paper. Regarding energy market dynamics, this paper excludes how domestic American energy policy can support long-term national security goals, other adversary resource vulnerabilities (namely around foodstuffs, metals, and rare earths), or deeper analysis of specific distillates and refined products within the end-use energy demands of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). For any of these and other connected areas, the first step is to demonstrate the whole-of-government awareness of, focus on, and alignment against the macro insecurities of U.S. adversaries’ supply chains and resource vulnerabilities.
This paper proceeds in three sections. First, it briefly examines the Japanese example in the Second World War and why today’s security environment requires an integrated approach when addressing energy markets. Second, it looks at the current state of international energy markets since the start of the Ukraine War and identifies how the current environment can be better exploited to deter both export reliant adversaries (Russia and Iran) and import reliant adversaries (China) and present a novel theory of how to hold at risk an emergent codependent relationship between America’s adversaries. Third, this paper briefly surveys potential policy courses of action with specific recommendations relating to how the United States can retool existing relationships, military exercises, and authorities to press on adversary energy vulnerabilities.
Japanese Energy Vulnerabilities in World War II
The American triumph in the wars and competition of the twentieth century was built in no small part on energy access, though largely by accident. Japan’s import dependence for critical resources, especially oil, weighed heavily on Japanese commanders and ultimately led to the decision to attack Pearl Harbor in December 1941. As historian Michael Barnhart explores in his history of Japan’s economic preparations for war, Japan—an island nation with almost no natural energy resources to speak of—focused its policy leading up to the War in the Pacific on shoring up macro deficiencies in agricultural production, industrial capacity, and energy supply.1 The decision by the Roosevelt administration in fall 1941 to blockade oil imports to Japan pinched this nerve and, in the minds of Japanese planners, forced their hand into war with the United States. Long-term dependence on imports “to maintain a starveling existence was intolerable to any Japanese statesman. Without a fundamental resolution, then, war was the only course open.”2 The following conquests by the Japanese navy and army throughout the Pacific—while the American Pacific Fleet smoldered in Pearl Harbor—were intended to create an internally consistent and autarkic economic system for the Empire of the Rising Sun.3 With millions of barrels of daily oil production flowing from the former Dutch East Indies and Japan’s adversaries licking their wounds thousands of miles away, the most optimistic of the Japanese senior leadership saw victory near at hand, namely a vision of Japan dominating East Asia with “the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere as a self-sufficient and power unit.”4 Less understood is how central oil production and transport was to unraveling that theory of victory and the continued lessons for strategy today.
Gaining control of abundant crude oil production was a necessary but not sufficient first step to Japanese energy self-sufficiency. The internal maritime transport network of tankers, ports, refineries, pipelines, and miscellaneous logistics facilities enabled the necessary access to that production and creation of an internally consistent supply chain for the Japanese war machine. Throughout the war, internal bureaucratic friction between the Army Air Forces (AAF), the Navy, and the Joint Chiefs in Washington kept American forces from targeting Japanese oil production and, instead, focused more intently on strategic bombing of Japanese cities, especially after 1944.5 However, the dismantling of the Japanese merchant marine fleet, including internal energy transportation and refining capacity, remained a priority for the submarine force and by 1943, more Japanese cargo tonnage was sunk than built.6 By 1944, almost double the number of cargo ships were sunk than the Japanese capacity to replace them and the Imperial Japanese Fleet was quickly starved of its energy requirements, realizing the pre-war fears of Japanese planners.7 The Japanese gamble in amassing their naval forces for a decisive engagement at the battles of the Philippine Sea or Leyte Gulf was informed in no small part by their desperate lack of long-term energy supply for the fleet or capacity for dispersed operations without a supporting merchant marine fleet.8 The subsequent defeat and irrelevance of the Japanese navy for the rest of the war, and the relative freedom of maneuver for the American navy, can in retrospect be seen in many ways as an outgrowth of energy security, or lack thereof.
Today’s Energy Landscape
Looking at the Pacific landscape today roughly 80 years later, many of the same dynamics are not only still at play, but concentrated. Imperial Japan of the 1930s is not the China of today, but in international energy markets, the analogy strikes a chord. Whereas China certainly does not suffer from the across-the-board resource constraints that Japan did ahead of the war, they are not only still heavily reliant on imported energy supplies but, in key ways, are even more vulnerable.
Today, China is the world’s largest importer of crude oil, natural gas, and coal. As a share of total energy use, coal is by far the largest input (60 percent), followed by oil (18.1 percent) and natural gas (8.0 percent).9 Importantly, while enormous Chinese investments in renewables and nuclear power have slowly started to decouple rising electricity demand from coal consumption, oil consumption, and that of related imports throughout China, they have continued to rise in lock step for the last twenty years despite widespread PRC investment and subsidization of domestic electric vehicle production and related industries. China may, in the long term, have a solution to replacing coal and eventually natural gas import requirements for electricity generation, but the PRC has not found a viable alternative to oil imports.
Focusing on oil imports and returning to the Japanese example, imperial planners in the early to mid-twentieth century had potential regional solutions to their oil requirements which the PRC does not have today. Whereas near-field production in the Dutch East Indies (today’s Indonesia) approached seven million barrels a day in the 1940s, today Indonesia and Brunei combined produce closer to 700,000 barrels daily.11 Expanding to all Southeast Asia, including Malaysia, only increases that number to around two million, forcing the Chinese to look further afield for their oil requirements and taking regional hegemony, or conquest, off the table as a solution for energy security.12 Together with the insufficiency of Chinese domestic geology for either traditional or non-traditional (shale, or tight oil) production, China is today forced to import almost all—around 75 percent—of its oil.13 Unlike 1940s Japan, however, China does not have any realistic means to create an autarkic economic model for its energy requirements through military force. Across many commodities, but most acutely in energy, China is the only global power that has existential reliance on sea lanes for market access. This glaring fact stares Chinese strategic planners in the face daily and creates a wide threshold from which the United States—who through its own navy and global alliance structures dominates the world’s oceans—can deter Chinese aggression.
Where and how China sources its foreign barrels is important. In 2023, China broke records, importing 11.28 million barrels of oil, a double-digit percentage increase from 2022 and almost a full million barrels a day higher than its previous record before the pandemic.14 Looking first at exporting countries, China has long had strong ties with Russia, Angola, Iran, and the Gulf States, primarily Saudi Arabia.15 Interest in longer term supply stability and insulation from price shocks has seen China invest significantly in both internal petroleum storage and the Eastern Siberia–Pacific Ocean (ESPO) pipeline to Russian oilfields.16 Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, China has further consolidated imports from Russia, taking advantage of both Russia’s need to find markets for its previously European Union (EU) bound barrels and the resulting price advantage relative to what they can expect either on spot markets or from the Gulf.17 In 2023, for the first time, Russia overtook Saudi Arabia as the top exporter to China, increasing its share of Chinese imports by 24 percent.18 Looking to Iran, China has for decades been willing to accept narrowly disguised Iranian barrels imported under the auspices of Malaysia, Oman, and others.19
On the surface and in the short term, these trends point to a Chinese advantage. Cheap and abundant nuclear and renewable energy offers a solution for coal imports and natural gas requirements for electricity production, and oil imports have never been cheaper.20 Russia contorting itself to reroute oil shipments to China hands China the leverage to demand rock-bottom prices on Russian producers with few other places to go. The Chinese relationship with Russia has become even more one-sided with energy exports at the center of this change. Together with continued and concentrated Iranian reliance on Chinese markets in the last five years, long-term Chinese supply and price security for oil imports seems stronger today than it has in years.21 U.S. and EU efforts at a price cap or a supply squeeze through sanctions, exclusion from SWIFT, or denial of Western insurance on oil shipments have all failed to cripple the Russian energy sector and have handed China cheaper and more reliable long-term energy supplies.22 For the first time, the majority of both Russian and Iranian oil exports are bound for China, which has the cards in hand to negotiate or otherwise take advantage of steep discounts relative to world benchmarks.23 The energy future of the PRC looks bright to many in Beijing with Western policy impotent in achieving its goals of coercing Russian or Iranian action by crippling their respective economies. The West’s failure and Russian and Iranian desperation all play into Chinese hands.
Digging deeper into current Chinese imports from Russia, the picture becomes more complicated. While it is true that current Russian imports to China sell today for a steep discount relative to Brent crude on international markets, that oil must travel further and at higher risk than before.24 Prior to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, much of Russian oil produced went West through either pipelines or export terminals in the Black and Baltic Sea for delivery to European industry and refineries. Russian and Chinese investment in the ESPO Pipeline was meant to manage significant Chinese demand from Russia without the Chinese relying on riskier maritime trade. Today, with ESPO unable to expand its capacity in the short term, Chinese oil imports from Russia are increasingly completing a near-full circumnavigation of the world. Starting in either the Black or Baltic Seas, tankers carrying Russian crude are forced to transit respectively the Danish straits, the English Channel, the Straits of Gibraltar (or the Dardanelles), the Suez Canal, the Bab al-Mandeb, the Straits of Malacca, and, finally, the South China Sea before delivery onto China’s one maritime coast.25 The only other export route is north through the Arctic Ocean from the Russian port of Murmansk, a route around 20 percent shorter, but much riskier and contingent on sea ice levels and an aging fleet of majority Soviet-era icebreakers.26 Iranian and Saudi exports to China similarly rely on transit through the straits of Hormuz, Malacca, and then the South China Sea. Even if Chinese traders and state enterprises are today taking advantage of lower Russian prices, their supply chain is longer and more prone to a litany of risks than almost any other commodity for any other country in the world at any point in history.
Chinese insecurity about their role in international energy markets has been an animating policy priority for years.27 The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), growth in international military deployments, and priorities at multinational forums have long been oriented around expanding import avenues for Chinese energy supplies, securing access to those supplies, and maintaining a liquid international market for pariah states trying to evade Western sanctions and sell oil to China. Looking at Chinese success going into 2024, the picture is mixed. Investment in the much-lauded China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), including the port at Gwadar, was intended in no small way to help alleviate potential supply constraints at the straits of Malacca.28 More than five years and $60 billion of investment later, debts have been renegotiated or completely written off and no new Chinese oil imports are flowing through Pakistan and into China.29 The picture is similar with Chinese ambitions for transcontinental rail traffic connecting Western China to Central Asia and eventually Eastern Europe, or with plans to use Burma as an alternative. Despite concerted effort and significant investment, Chinese imports, especially for energy supplies, not only rely on the same chokepoints and suppliers as before, but are even more geo-strategically vulnerable since the start of the Ukraine war.
Policy Recommendations
Surveying the current landscape and security priorities of the United States, American policy should seek not to double down on failed efforts to isolate Russian and Iranian supplies, but rather to emphasize and hold at risk the emergent codependent energy relationship between America’s adversaries. Seen in this light, Russian resilience in the face of Western sanctions should not only be accepted, but in some ways encouraged if it implies further Chinese reliance on Russian imports akin to current Chinese-Iranian codependency. That this resilience can only be bought with further ‘investment’ into longer and more dangerous supply routes reliant on aging and functionally uninsured ships is all the better. With Chinese imports growing as their supply chains increase their risk, Chinese isolation from international markets—even if at the price of cheap oil and a stronger hand with their junior partners in Tehran and Moscow—opens novel options for the United States in deterring PRC military activity.
The most obvious point of growing coercive advantage for the United States as it relates to international energy markets is in the naval domain. As political scientists Llewelyn Hughes and Austin Long demonstrate in their research on the coercive potential of oil markets, oil imports alone “provide little coercive leverage, because the international oil market is integrated.”30 Context is important, however, as looking at the oil market singularly “does not account for the separation of the physical supply chain into a series of related but discrete segments.”31 The most important of those segments being transportation, seaborne transportation specifically and most acutely in the Chinese case. In the maritime domain, United States and allied naval prowess is increasingly dominant the further supply chains move from China. With China relying on longer and riskier supply chains transiting through additional chokepoints surrounded by more American allies (i.e. Sweden and Finland joining the North Atlantic Treaty Organization—NATO), American opportunities to hold at risk vulnerable Chinese energy imports have grown since the start of the Ukraine war. This risk has, so far, not translated into the spot price of Russian oil, but is likely top of mind to Chinese strategic planners.32 The focus of American policy should be translating that vulnerability and fear into deterrence and coercion.
First, American policy should focus its military and intelligence activities across agencies and authorities to track all points in the energy sector relevant to these trading relationships. Intelligence currently stovepiped in individual combatant commands, intelligence agencies, embassies, and with allies should be consolidated and used to create an end-to-end picture of the evolving Chinese energy supply chain unconstrained by the largely arbitrary geographic and bureaucratic distinctions between the agencies and departments responsible for gathering this intelligence. Incorporating relevant open-source intelligence capabilities and commercial efforts at ship tracking into this picture would provide decision-makers in Washington an unprecedented picture of current PRC liabilities and vulnerabilities as it relates to its energy economy. Prioritizing this integrated supply chain picture in allied engagements and negotiations will help tailor intelligence gathering, sharing, and dissemination across services and agencies to better understand specific patterns of movement and areas of vulnerability.
Focus on commercially available and open-source data in this domain could yield particularly outsized returns. Whereas bespoke data sources and collection methods in the classified domain remain both powerful and appropriately compartmentalized when considering gathering data on sensitive targets, the relative value of commercial data with the growth of private sector capabilities in locating strategically important economic assets is underappreciated by the Department of Defense and Intelligence Community. Importantly, with data gathered and aggregated from unclassified sources and disseminated on unclassified networks, any insights derived can be directly shared with allies and partners.
Second, U.S. policymakers should tailor current sanctions policy to encourage further codependency between Russian and Iranian exports and Chinese imports. Most Iranian barrels already flow to China, and in 2023 Chinese imports represented 52 percent of Russian exports, the highest on record.33 Around 80 percent of the rest (40 percent of the total) of Russian exports for 2024 are estimated to go to India.34 While Indian institutions are willing to shoulder the burden of insuring these Russian barrels for the time being, tailored imposition (or merely the threat) of secondary sanctions against Indian refineries and distributors would likely have an outsized impact on Indian appetite for cheap Russian oil. Combining the priority of decoupling allied governments’ consumption of Russian oil (in order to direct more towards China) with American diplomatic priorities in the Gulf could help breathe new life into Middle East and Gulf engagement vis-à-vis India and the Organization for Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC).
Third, American military engagement and military exercises must demonstrate a global ability to find, fix, track, target, and engage relevant points of the Chinese energy supply chain. The risk involved in current exports to China that is not priced into what the PRC is paying for Russian oil should be priced into their decision making when looking at American military engagement with allies, maneuvers, and materiel posturing. While questions abound about American capability to sustain large deployments during wartime near the Chinese coast, American and allied naval supremacy at the expanding number of chokepoints through which Chinese oil must travel is unrivaled. Paired with a persistent picture of the relevant vessels and players contributing to this supply chain—available to be shared widely with allies within traditional alliances and with less formal allies such as Vietnam—and PRC strategic decision making will be forced to consider the costs of immediate and holistic energy constraints. Existing NATO, Central Command, or Indo-Pacific Command multi-lateral naval exercises to orient the Joint Force and allies around a shared concept of operations (CONOP) to hold long-term PRC energy interests at risk provide ample venues to develop and demonstrate this capability. With a short-term impossibility of preventing naval restrictions further afield than the South China Sea, and a long-term economic and diplomatic cost of curtailing cheap energy imports from its only two (and codependent) allies, Chinese decision making will be forced to contend more closely with the threat of significant oil shocks.
Consolidating intelligence on PRC energy vulnerabilities, tailoring sanctions and diplomatic work to increase those vulnerabilities, and leveraging global naval dominance and alliances to hold those vulnerabilities at risk hand the United States a powerful card to deter and coerce PRC activity. This portfolio of activity would also represent a public and global answer to the question of what options the United States has and is willing to flex in the event of a protracted conflict. Whereas questions abound about the Joint Force’s capability to operate within the weapons engagement zone of PRC air, naval, and rocket forces in the vicinity of their territorial waters, American capacity to dominate the sea lanes necessary for PRC imports is near certain.
Overall, American security policy and energy policy in the international arena have failed to meet their stated aims. Russian sanctions since its Ukraine invasion have not ended the war or deterred continued Russian escalation. Iran’s regime has been suffering under considerable economic pressure for decades and the regime today still feels bold enough to brazenly sponsor (or otherwise green light) terrorist attacks throughout the region, including against American installations and personnel. What these sanctions have done, however, is contort international energy supply chains amongst America’s adversaries, mutually increasing the geopolitical risk for all parties. Treating a Russian-Iranian-Chinese energy system as a consolidated whole and demonstrating an ability to hold it at risk holistically will make clear American leverage at points of Chinese vulnerability and strengthen the hand of American policymakers in long-term deterrence in twenty-first century strategic competition.
Image: Evans, Jim, Refurbishment Platform for Drilling Rigs in Corpus Christi Bay, October 5, 2018, Retrieved from: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Refurbishment_Platform_for_Drilling_Rigs_–_Corpus_Christi.jpg, used under Wikimedia Commons.
[1] Michael A. Barnhart, Japan Prepares for Total War: The Search for Economic Security, 1919-1941 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1987) 64-77, 215-222.
[2] Barnhart, Japan Prepares for Total War, 263.
[3] Barnhart, Japan Prepares for Total War, 22-50; William L. Langer and S. Everett Gleason, The Undeclared War, 1940–1941 (New York: Published for the Council on Foreign Relations by Harper and Brothers, 1953), 645-654.
[4] Barnhart, Japan Prepares for Total War, 272.
[5] Stephen L. Wolborsky, “Choke Hold: The Attack on Japanese Oil in World War II,” Master’s Thesis (School of Advanced Airpower Studies, 1994) 28-32.
[6] The Joint Army-Navy Assessment Committee, Japanese Naval and Merchant Shipping Losses During World War II by All Causes (Washington, DC: The Joint Army-Navy Assessment Committee -NAVEXOS P-468, February 1947).
[7] Ian W. Toll, Pacific Crucible: War at Sea in the Pacific, 1941-1942 (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2012), 81-92.
[8] Wolborsky, “Choke Hold,” 1-7.
[9] International Energy Agency, World Energy Balances, (Paris: International Energy Agency, 2024) https://www.iea.org/data-and-statistics/data-product/world-energy-balances.
[10] International Energy Agency, China, (Paris: IEA, 2024) https://www.iea.org/countries/china/energy-mix.
[11] B.R. Mitchell, International Historical Statistics: Africa, Asia, & Oceana, 1750-1993 (London: Palgrave MacMillan, 1998) 375-379.
[12] International Energy Agency, World Energy Balances.
[13] Jimmy Troderman, “China imported record amounts of crude oil in 2023,” US Energy Information Agency, April 16, 2024, https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=61843#.
[14] Troderman, “China imported record amounts of crude oil in 2023.”
[15] International Energy Agency, World Energy Balances.
[16] Samantha Custer, et al., Tracking Chinese Development Finance: An Application of AidData’s TUFF 3.0 Methodology (Williamsburg, VA: University of William & Mary, 2023).
[17] Chen Aizhu, “Summary of China’s savings from buying sanctioned crude oil,” Reuters, October 11 2023, https://www.reuters.com/article/idUSL1N3BF0KB/.
[18] Shri Navaratnam, “China-Russia 2023 trade value hits record high of $240 bln – Chinese customs,” Reuters, January 12, 2024, https://www.reuters.com/markets/china-russia-2023-trade-value-hits-record-high-240-bln-chinese-customs-2024-01-12/.
[19] International Energy Agency, Oil Market Report – January 2024, (Paris: IEA, 2024) https://www.iea.org/reports/oil-market-report-january-2024.
[20] International Energy Agency, Oil Market Report – January 2024.
[21] U.S. Library of Congress, Congressional Research Service, Iran’s Petroleum Exports to China and U.S. Sanctions, IN112267 (updated February 28, 2024).
[22] Isaac Levi, “January 2024 — Monthly analysis of Russian fossil fuel exports and sanctions,” Center for Research on Energy and Clean Air,February 14, 2024, https://energyandcleanair.org/january-2024-monthly-analysis-of-russian-fossil-fuel-exports-and-sanctions/.
[23] Sam Fleming, et al., “IMF Raises Russia Growth Outlook as War Boosts Economy,” Financial Times, January 30 2024, https://www.ft.com/content/21a5be9c-afaa-495f-b7af-cf937093144d.
[24] Lutz Kilian and David Rapson, “How global oil sanctions lowered Russian oil export prices,” Dallas Federal Reserve, May 14, 2024, https://www.dallasfed.org/research/economics/2024/0514.
[25] Henry Meyer, “Russia Builds New Asia Trade Routes to Weaken Sanctions Over War,” Bloomberg News, April 17, 2024, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-04-17/russia-builds-new-asia-trade-routes-to-weaken-sanctions-over-war.
[26] Anita Powell, “Russia Shipping More Oil to Chinese Ports via Arctic Route,” VOA News, October 4, 2023, https://www.voanews.com/a/russia-shipping-more-oil-to-chinese-ports-via-arctic-route-/7296018.html.
[27] Joe Leahy, James Kynge and Benjamin Parkin, “Ten years of China’s Belt and Road: what has $1tn achieved?,” Financial Times, October 22, 2023, https://www.ft.com/content/83501dd5-fe6d-4169-9d83-28a8cf46e681.
[28] Frederic Grare, “Along the Road: Gwadar and China’s Power Projection,” European Institute for Security Studies, July 31, 2018, https://carnegieendowment.org/posts/2018/07/along-the-road-gwadar-and-chinas-power-projection?lang=en.
[29] Adnan Aamir, “China-Pakistan Belt and Road Initiative hits buffers,” Financial Times, December 7, 2021, https://www.ft.com/content/da199e37-e85a-4c76-a52e-9811f9b89713.
[30] Llewelyn Hughes and Austin Long, “Is There an Oil Weapon?,” International Security 39, no. 3 (2015), 152–189, 157.
[31] Hughes and Long, “Is There an Oil Weapon?,” 159.
[32] Brock Tessman and Wojtek Wolfe, “Great Powers and Strategic Hedging: The Case of Chinese Energy Security Strategy,” International Studies Review (2011) 13, 214-240.
[33] International Energy Agency, World Energy Balances.
[34] Nidhi Verma, “India’s Russian oil imports rise to nine-month high in April,” Reuters, May 21 2024, https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/indias-russian-oil-imports-rise-nine-month-high-april-2024-05-21/.
