India, March 17 -- Crude oil, to the layperson, is just crude oil which can be processed in a refinery to make a wide range of end-use fuels and other extremely important petrochemicals. But for someone in the business of actually refining crude oil, there is crude oil and there is crude oil. Energy market lexicon has terms such as sweet and sour and light and heavy for these varieties. What do these complexities mean for India, which is having to diversity its crude imports away from West Asia because of the ongoing war? Here is what an HT analysis shows.

Published by HT Digital Content Services with permission from Hindustan Times....