• Ras Tanura-to-India VLCC freight rose 411% since the Iran war began on February 28, 2026, from $0.85 to $4.34 a barrel, per Financial Express data cited by OilPrice.com.
• War-risk insurance for a single Strait of Hormuz transit has risen from about $250,000 to as much as $10 million, per the same reporting.
• India's total crude import bill rose 60% year-on-year in April-June and 41% year-on-year in July — well above the roughly 25% rise in Brent over the same period.
• Alternative routes also repriced: Corpus Christi-to-India freight rose 150% and Ust-Luga-to-India more than doubled, narrowing India's options to shop around Hormuz risk.
• Brent itself is up only about 25% since the war began, with spikes into the triple digits — meaning freight and insurance, not the crude price, explain most of the gap in India's import bill.

India's crude import bill has surged not primarily because Brent repriced, but because moving that crude out of the Gulf got dramatically more expensive. Freight on the benchmark Ras Tanura-to-India route is up 411% and Strait of Hormuz war-risk insurance has jumped from about $250,000 to as much as $10 million a voyage since the Iran war began on February 28, 2026, according to Financial Express data cited by OilPrice.com on August 25, 2026. The result: India's total import bill rose 60% year-on-year in April-June and 41% in July — well above Brent's own roughly 25% move. This is analysis, not advice.

What repriced

Freight, not just crude, is repricing India's Gulf oil bill. VLCC rates on the Ras Tanura-to-India route rose 411% since the Iran war began on February 28, 2026 — from $0.85 to $4.34 a barrel — while war-risk insurance for a single Strait of Hormuz transit climbed from about $250,000 to as much as $10 million, according to Financial Express data cited by OilPrice.com on August 25, 2026. Brent itself has risen about 25% since the war began, with spikes into the triple digits, per OilPrice.com, and stood at $89.29 a barrel on Trading Economics data the same day — a smaller move than the freight and insurance repricing layered on top of it.

Why India can't just route around it

Ras Tanura is the shortest, cheapest Gulf-to-India path, which is precisely why its cost inflation matters more than a generic freight index would suggest. India has leaned on alternative grades as Hormuz risk rose, but those routes repriced too: Corpus Christi-to-India freight rose 150%, from $6.35 to $15.86 a barrel, and Ust-Luga-to-India more than doubled, from $8.40 to $19.90 a barrel, per the same Financial Express figures cited by OilPrice.com. Substitution did not insulate Indian refiners from the shock — it moved the number, not the exposure.

What the wire's framing gets right

India's total crude import bill rose 60% year-on-year in the April-June quarter and 41% year-on-year in July, per Financial Express reporting cited by OilPrice.com. The gap between Brent's roughly 25% move and a 41-60% import-bill jump indicates freight, insurance and grade-substitution costs are doing real work alongside the headline oil price, not merely passing it through. This is analysis, not a trading call: the price-versus-logistics split is directional, based on the cited figures, not a precise decomposition.

What to watch next

OilPrice.com's reporting does not project when Gulf freight or insurance costs might normalize; what it does show is that logistics, not the crude price alone, is currently the swing factor in India's import bill. Two things to watch: whether Indian refiners shift further toward non-Gulf grades if Ras Tanura costs stay elevated, and whether any Hormuz de-escalation brings war-risk premiums down faster than it brings Brent down, given insurance and freight have moved several multiples further than the oil price since February 28, 2026. This is analysis, not advice on positioning.