28 Mar 2024
Friday 15 March 2013 - 19:00
Story Code : 22542

Iran slips to 7th among India's oil suppliers

NEW DELHI--Iran was India's seventh-largest supplier of crude oil for the first nine months of this financial year, slipping from third position after U.S. and European sanctions against Tehran forced India's refiners to cut their imports from the Persian Gulf country.
India usually doesn't make public the amount of crude it imports from individual countries, but junior Oil Minister Panabaaka Lakshmi provided the data as a written reply Friday to lawmakers who requested the information in the lower house of Parliament.

Iran supplied 9.7 million metric tons of crude to India in the nine-month period ended on Dec. 31. While the government didn't provide comparative figures for the April-December period of the last financial year, it said for the full year ended March 31, 2012, Iran was India's third-largest supplier.

The U.S. and the EU have shut down the use of their financial systems for Iranian crude trade as they accuse Tehran of developing nuclear weapons. The U.S. recently imposed more treasury sanctions on trade with Iran, making imports from that country further difficult in the hope that such actions would starve Tehran of cash and force it to give up its nuclear program.

Iran says its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes.

Since India can't deposit dollars or euros in any foreign bank for importing crude from Iran because of the sanctions, payment has been restricted to rupee deposits in Indian banks which Iran can use to buy goods from India. The value of Iran's imports from India is much smaller than that of its crude exports to the South Asian country.

Meanwhile, refiners are also getting cagey about importing from Iran.

Mangalore Refinery & Petrochemicals Ltd., India's largest importer of Iranian crude, might be forced to stop imports from the Persian Gulf nation if it can't renew the insurance on its refinery, Managing Director P.P. Upadhya said Thursday.

Local insurers have been reluctant to take the risk of providing insurance to refineries processing Iranian crude as they are mainly dependent on reinsurance in overseas markets to hedge their insurance risk. Global reinsurers are staying away due to the Western sanctions on Iran-related transactions.

For the April-December period, Saudi Arabia retained its position as India's main crude supplier, selling 24.8 million tons, followed by Iraq at 17.2 million tons, Venezuela at 15.1 million tons, Kuwait at 13.2 million tons, the United Arab Emirates at 11.4 million tons and Nigeria at 9.9 million tons.

India's total oil imports were 134 million tons over the April-December period, valued at $104.54 billion.

By The Wall Street Journal

 

The Iran Project is not responsible for the content of quoted articles.
https://theiranproject.com/vdcgxn9x.ak9xt4j5ra.html
Your Name
Your Email Address