Moscow pressures US as oil sanctions fuel crisis
Amid soaring oil prices, US allows temporary purchases of Russian oil at sea as the Iran war shows no end.
The news of war, with its missiles and body counts, often feels like a distant roar to those not in its path. But on Thursday, that roar echoed in the most mundane of places: a kitchen in Thiruvananthapuram. At the Technopark, a sprawling campus of glass and steel where India’s tech minds dream in code, the reality of a conflict 2,500 kilometers away settled over the lunch hour like a stubborn fog.
The food courts were quiet. Too quiet. The usual clatter of utensils and chatter of queues was replaced by a hush. The LPG cylinders had run out, and no one knew when the next delivery would come. For the software engineers and team leads staring at empty thalis, the war in West Asia was no longer a headline. It was a hunger pang. Companies began murmuring about work from home, not for safety from bombs, but for survival without lunch.
In Parliament, the debate was loftier but no less urgent. Union Minister Hardeep Singh Puri stood to deliver what sounded like good news. Before the crisis, nearly half of India’s oil flowed through the narrow throat of the Strait of Hormuz, a passage now choked by conflict. But thanks to what he called the Prime Minister’s “outstanding diplomatic outreach,” India had found new friends. Non-Hormuz sourcing had jumped to 70 percent. India now buys oil from 40 countries, up from 27 two decades ago. The numbers were impressive, a testament to frantic, behind-the-scenes negotiations.
But numbers on a ledger don’t fill a cylinder in Kerala. They don’t explain why a canteen worker in Thiruvananthapuram has to send her customers home hungry.
Across the aisle, Rahul Gandhi saw a different picture. He rose to attack, not over crude benchmarks, but over the empty gas cylinders in ordinary homes. “The Prime Minister is asking the people not to panic,” he said, his voice sharp, “but he himself is panicked for completely different reasons.” The charge was political, but the undercurrent was human: in times of crisis, data points and diplomatic victories mean little to a family that can’t cook dinner.
On Friday morning, global oil markets offered a small, tentative sigh of relief. Prices eased slightly from the nerve-wracking $100 per barrel mark. The United States had issued a 30-day license, a temporary pass allowing countries to buy Russian oil and petroleum products stranded at sea. It was a Band-Aid on a bleeding wound, a short-term fix that acknowledged the world’s fragile dependency on fuels that travel through dangerous waters.
In the Gulf, the waters themselves remained dangerous. The Strait of Hormuz, that slim corridor of sea, had become a moat of fire. The Indian-flagged tankers that Puri’s ministry was working to protect were not just steel hulls carrying crude; they were floating lifelines. On board, men from Kerala and Gujarat and Maharashtra went about their duties, their eyes scanning horizons for drones, their hearts in their throats. Three Indian seafarers were already dead, killed in earlier attacks. Another was missing, his fate unknown, his family back home clinging to a thread of hope.
In a small house on the outskirts of Kochi, that thread was all that remained. The mother of a missing sailor had not eaten in two days. She sat by the window, staring at the sea she could not see, waiting for news that would not come. The LPG cylinder in her kitchen was full, but she had no appetite. What good is fuel for cooking when the one you cook for is gone?
Her son was one of the 30 Indian-flagged vessels that India was desperately trying to safeguard. Diplomats were talking to Iran, to Gulf nations, to anyone who would listen. Naval escorts were being considered. But for her, the escorts were too late.
As evening fell over Thiruvananthapuram, the tech workers logged off early. Some packed their laptops, preparing for the work-from-home that now seemed inevitable. They would code from their kitchens, where the cylinders might or might not have gas. In Delhi, the politicians traded barbs and statistics. In the Gulf, the tankers sailed on, their crews holding their breath.
And in Kochi, a mother sat by the window, waiting. The war was 2,500 kilometers away, but it had already moved in.