India’s oil imports from Iran rise 36% in face of US bans
India has reported a whopping jump in oil imports from Iran in October in face of US sanctions that officials in Washington earlier said were meant to bring the Islamic Republic’s crucial sales of oil to zero.
India’s official figures show the country imported as much as 2.57 million tonnes of oil worth an overall of $1.42 billion from Iran over the past month.
The figure marked an increase of 36 percent over the same period last year when a total of 1.89 million tonnes were shipped to India from Iran’s Persian Gulf ports.
The administration of US President Donald Trump launched the second wave of sanctions against Iran from November 5 in which a universal ban on the country’s oil exports was cited as a primary objective.
Although US officials mainly targeted Iran’s oil sales, officials in Tehran have repeatedly rejected the feasibility of this, stressing that international consumers cannot afford to lose Iranian supplies.
India is the second largest importer of Iranian oil after China, importing 17.62 million tonnes of oil between April and October of this year.
The US has temporarily exempted Turkey, China, India, North Korea, Italy, Greece, Taiwan, and Japan from the ban it imposed on countries purchasing Iranian oil.
India had imported about 22 million tonnes of crude oil from Iran in 2017-18 and planned to raise that to about 30 million tonnes in 2018-19. But, as a condition of waiver, Indian oil firms will reduce their imports significantly, the source added.
Indian companies can import 1.25 million tonnes a month up to March 2019, according to media reports.
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