Iran becomes India’s number 2 oil supplier after Saudi Arabia companies took advantage of steeper discounts offered by Tehran, said India’s Oil Minister on Monday. After China, India is one of the biggest oil clients of Iran who shipped around 5.67 million tonnes of oil in the first 3 months of the fiscal year. Prior to the present year, Iran supplied approximately 3.46 million tonnes of oil to India last year between the months of April and June.
Iran Becomes second top Oil Supplier in India
Last year the state refiners that account to 60 percent of India’s 5 million barrels per day refining capacity protested against Tehran’s move and imported the oil from Iran instead of Saudi Arabia.
As per the stats, Indian Oil Corporation, Chennai Petroleum corp., Bharat Petroleum along with its unit Bharat Oman Refineries Ltd., Mangalore Refinery and Petrochemicals, and Hindustan Petroleum all together shipped 9.8 million tonnes of Iranian oil in the time period between 2017-2018. But at present, the estimate has been made that this fiscal year the imports from Iran will double.
While Iran has made to the second place in oil supply in India, Iraq still remains at the top of the list. Around April-June time period only, New Delhi shipped in 7.27 million tonnes of oil from Iraq and 5.22 million tonnes from Saudi Arabia.
India demands refiners to cut off Iran’s Oil Supply
All the countries who import oil from Iran are being pressurized to stop the import on account of the Washington withdrawal of Nuclear deal with Tehran. Also, there have been reports stating that the Indian ministry has asked the refiners to cut off their oil import from Iran.
According to the media reports, the first set of sanction is going to be implicated on August 6th and the rest preferably on the petroleum sector, however, will be following a 180-day wind-down period ending on 4th November.
India’s overall oil imports that arrived from Iran in June were less in an amount by 16 percent from May. This clearly depicts that the refiners have started weaning their plants off crude oil supply from Iran to avoid US sanctions.