Russia Turns Asia’s Oil Shock Into an Indonesian Opening

Russia has emerged as one of the clearest commercial beneficiaries of the US-Israel war with Iran. Before March 2026, buying Russian crude was widely treated as a sanctions risk that only Chinese and, to a lesser extent, Indian private companies could comfortably absorb. The first US waiver for Russian barrels, announced on March 12, changed that calculation. It showed that, during a major Middle Eastern supply disruption, Asia could not balance its oil market without Russian crude, and even Washington was aware of the that. Successive waiver extensions kept Russian oil trade legal across parts of Asia and encouraged regional buyers to view Moscow not only as an emergency supplier, but as a tool of energy security. In this context, the emerging oil relationship between Russia and Indonesia is one of the clearest examples.

Relations between Moscow and Jakarta have deepened since Prabowo Subianto was elected president in early 2024. Indonesia became a full member of BRICS in January 2025 and subsequently signed a free-trade agreement with the Eurasian Economic Union. Energy cooperation now appears to be moving from diplomatic declarations toward a more formal trading structure, espe

Fuente original: Yahoo Finance (https://finance.yahoo.com/energy/articles/russia-turns-asia-oil-shock-170000941.html)