Opposition leader Rahul Gandhi said that India’s energy security had been compromised and attributed the situation to what he described as a “flawed foreign policy”. He said that the Union government must start preparations immediately, warning that without action “crores of people could suffer”.
Gandhi asserted that India must decide its relationships with oil and gas suppliers on its own and accused the government of “bartering” the country’s energy security. He asked why the United States had been allowed “to decide who we buy oil from, who we buy gas from, and whether we can buy oil from Russia or not”. Read on.
Two Kuki men who had been missing since Wednesday were found dead in Manipur’s Kamjong district. The bodies were found in a forested area of Thawai Kuki village.
The Kuki-dominated authority of Shangkai village alleged that the two men had been abducted by persons belonging to the Tangkhul Naga community. The village authority said that the public had stopped vehicles plying along the Ukhrul road “out of deep concern for the safety of the detained and missing villagers”.
Amid the tensions, several Tangkhul Naga persons travelling along the Ukhrul-Imphal route had been abducted allegedly by Kuki persons on Wednesday. They were released on Thursday morning. Read on.
The conflict in West Asia has caused the “largest supply disruption in the history of the global oil market”, the International Energy Agency said. It said that oil producers in the Gulf had been forced to cut production by at least 10 million barrels per day. Of this, eight million barrels per day was crude oil and the remaining were petroleum products.
The slashing of production was attributed to the disruption in the Strait of Hormuz. The narrow waterbody connects the Gulf to the Arabian Sea. About 20% of the global petroleum supply passes through the maritime chokepoint.
Meanwhile, one Indian member of the crew onboard an oil tanker was killed in an attack near the Iraqi port city of Basra on Wednesday. The ship was sailing under the Marshall Islands flag. Read on.
The Indian rupee sank to a record low of 92.35 against the United States dollar amid concerns surrounding the West Asia conflict. It recovered marginally to end the session at 92.18.
The stock market continued to slide, with the Sensex and Nifty falling about 1%.
The price of benchmark Brent crude briefly touched the $100 per barrel-mark. It was about $72.8 per barrel on February 27, the day before the conflict started. Read on.
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