India orders a quarter less Iranian crude oil than last year
State refiners are cutting term-purchase deals over a row about Iran developing a natural gas field; India is one of the few countries trading with Iran despite sanctions
New Delhi — India plans to order about a quarter less Iranian crude oil than it bought last year, people familiar with the matter say, as state refiners cut term-purchase deals over a row between New Delhi and Tehran on the development of a natural gas field. The drop in volumes follows India’s threat to order state refiners — Hindustan Petroleum, Bharat Petroleum, Mangalore Refinery and Petrochemicals (MRPL), and Indian Oil — to reduce purchases from Iran if an Indian consortium is not awarded the rights to develop Iran’s huge Farzad B natural gas field. The volume cuts would put India’s imports of Iranian crude for this fiscal year at 370,000 barrels per day (bpd), according to the sources with knowledge of the planned deals. India is Iran’s top oil client after China and, last year, imported about 510,000 bpd of crude from the country, according to shipping data in Thomson Reuters Eikon. The reduced 2017-18 imports include 199,000 bpd by state refiners, a decline of about a third...
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