Hormuz shock added $22 billion to India’s fossil import bill, CREA finds

India paid about $22 billion more than pre-war market prices for seaborne fossil fuels between March and August, the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air said in an analysis released on Friday. That gross extra bill made India the second-hardest-hit importer after China on CREA's ledger. The European Union sat first on economic impact at $78 billion extra. China was at $35 billion.

Net of what India earned on the fuels it also sells, the cost across the products CREA tracked was $14.4 billion. The Helsinki-based group put that at 0.38 percent of GDP, or about 1.4 days of national income. Crude alone added $20.5 billion on a net basis. Those figures measure the gap between what importers actually paid and what the same cargoes would have cost if March-to-August prices had followed the curve the market had priced before the Hormuz fighting.

Worldwide, CREA put the extra bill for importers at $330 billion over six months. Crude took $164.1 billion of that. Diesel and gasoil took $73.8 billion. Gasoline took $35.7 billion. LNG across both basins took $38 billion. Jet fuel took $20 billion. The study does not subtract the extra revenue that exporters collected, so the global $330 billion is a buyer number, not a world welfare number.

The household file is LPG. CREA said India paid 29 percent more per tonne for imported cooking gas than the pre-war path implied, while import volumes fell 26 percent. The LPG import bill was about $4.7 billion, of which roughly one-fifth was the shock. Extra LPG cost was estimated at $1.1 billion. Import-parity cost for a 14.2-kg domestic cylinder averaged about $8.10 against a $6.28 pre-war expectation, a rise of about $1.80 per refill.

That cooking-gas increment sits beside the CNG increase that Indraprastha Gas posted for Saturday. IGL raised Delhi CNG by Rs 3.89 to Rs 86.98 a kilogram from 6 a.m. on 29 August, the fifth rise since the West Asia war began, and said spot LNG cargoes have nearly doubled from pre-crisis levels. Noida and Ghaziabad moved to Rs 95.59. CREA's six-month ledger is the upstream reason those city-gate prices keep moving.

Iran has said it is writing conditions for any reopening of the strait. Mohsen Rezaei told Al Manar that mediators asked for a list. An IRGC spokesman restated three demands: lift the port blockade, pay compensation, drop sanctions. Trump said the United States is not talking and will keep the economic campaign in place. Until tankers move on the old terms, CREA's method will keep adding months to the $22 billion.

The report's useful distinction is gross versus net. India looks second on gross extra imports because it buys a lot of crude. It looks third on net cost because some of the same price spike feeds export earnings. Policy that treats the $22 billion as a pure loss overstates the hit. Policy that ignores the $1.80 on a cylinder understates what households already paid.