In the wake of last week’s G7 ministers’ announcement of an attempted price cap on Russian oil sales, it is widely being acknowledged that the move will be useless unless nations such as China and India agree to the coalition. Indian Petroleum Minister Hardeep Singh Puri was interviewed by CNBC at the Gastech conference in Milan this week, and provided an instructional course in a real defense of peoples and values, against the ideological fantasies of hypocrites.
When asked about the price cap, he replied that there are many factors involved, such as the supply shortages, Covid disruptions, food and fertilizer shortages, all of which are complicating a response to such an initiative. “Now what will the proposal mean? We will look at it very carefully. Who will be the participants? What will be the implications? Etc.” When the reporter then asked if he had a moral conflict by buying oil from Russia, Puri made his priorities clear: “No there’s no conflict. I have a moral duty to my consumer. Do I as a democratically elected government want a situation where the petrol pump runs dry?” He was pressed further, and he responded, “No I’m not getting into that debate. It’s a question of energy…. And by the way, those who want to do that ideological punitive action [the EU bloc]—they’re still buying [from Russia] and they’re going to continue buying for a while. So that moral conflict question should be asked to those who have addressed it.”
The reporter was getting upset, so she goaded him further: “So who is responsible for the energy crisis? Russia or the West?” Puri replied by talking about his long time as a diplomat, and how, while he was at the UN, he witnessed the resolutions calling for military intervention into Libya and then Syria. At the time he warned against this, but they went ahead anyway, and “see what’s happening there today.” He warned: “Please be very careful about what you are unleashing. Countries can get unraveled, and those consequences are still being felt.”
He discussed how India currently consumes 5 million barrels/day of oil, a number which will continue to go up to 6, 7, even 9 and beyond, and if India cannot navigate this current economic and energy crisis, and isolate its citizens from that, the consequences will be terrible. “Energy is the lifeline of economies.” But the hypocrisy is astounding: “the Europeans buy more [from Russia] in one afternoon than I do in a quarter,” the Minister charged. (Of course, the Minister could also have noted that India is being attacked by the West for not stopping their purchases from Russia, while at the same time Europeans are attacking Russia for not allowing purchases by Europe!)
To make matters even worse for Western ideologues, Puri did not spare those talking about going “green” in an energy crisis such as exists today. “Again you have to be realistic about that. If you don’t survive at the point at which you are now, the chances of being able to make the [green] transition are going to be just that much more difficult,” he added, chuckling.
