Earlier this month, Brazil's state-controlled oil giant Petrobras couldn't have found a bigger event to unveil a major new customer. At the Brazil Energy Forum in Rio de Janeiro, the company's director of logistics, commercialization and markets, Claudio Romeo Schlosser, said an agreement had been reached with India's Bharat Petroleum Corporation for the delivery of 6 million barrels of oil annually between 2025 and 2026.

"We are expanding our international customer base. Until now, it has been heavily concentrated on China," Schlosser said in Rio, before traveling to India 10 days later where the deal was finalized and signed on February 12.

Bharat Petroleum, which is owned by the Indian state, is the world's third-largest importer of oil, securing most of India's oil supply — roughly 85% of which was imported from other countries last year. The deal will be a massive boost to Petrobras' exports to India, currently only about 4%.

Petrobras signed the deal with Bharat in the hope of expanding exports to India to 24 million barrels per year, Schlosser said.

The deal comes as India and Brazil are seeking to intensify their economic ties as members of the BRICS group of nations, which also includes Russia, China and South Africa.

With the oil agreement, the........

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