https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2022/10/11/india-to-weigh-russias-offer-on-sakhalin-1-oil-project
India’s petroleum minister, Hardeep Singh Puri, said that Russia and India have had healthy discussions on the topic of the Sakhalin-1 oil and gas project. The Sakhalin-1 Oil and Gas Project was originally an oil production agreement between the Sakhalin government and Russia that was managed by Exxon. However after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Exxon withdrew from the agreement leading the Russian government to grant ownership of the project to a Russian based company. India is observing this situation alongside the recent OPEC cut in oil production. Puri claimed “at no stage have we ever been told not to buy Russian oil,” as to defend the inherently controversial decision to have economic talks with Russia after their unjustified invasion of Ukraine.
India is currently one of the fastest growing economies and populations in the world. This leads to an obvious need for more energy, however, India has very little of its own oil reserves. Being almost in the exact middle point between the middle east and east asia india should in theory have many ways to get oil to their west. However, despite being geographically close to many countries with oil reserves, India has still chosen to go out of its way to have talks with Russia, to purchase a stake in its oil production. This could very well be seen as a bad faith move or even taking sides by western powers, who have been strongly encouraging countries to stop buying oil from Russia after their invasion of ukraine.
In class we discussed the collective goods issue. This issue is the idea that countries are not willing to give up their own personal interests to serve the greater good. While international problems are complex and there is technically no one right point of view, we will consider avoiding trade with Russia as the greater good on account of their invasion being unjustified and unreasonably brutal. In this case India was unwilling to make moves towards the greater good, because it would go against their personal interest, of securing an energy source for their growing population.