India’s State Owned Oil Firms Will Double Oil Imports From Iran

India's public sector oil enterprises are likely to import twice the amount of oil from Iran in 2018-2019 period than what they had imported in the previous year. Iran, Reuters has reported, is luring importers such as India by offering deep freight discounts in exchange for taking higher volumes.

Over 3,96,000 barrels per day (BPD) of Iranian oil is likely to be imported by state owned oil agencies such as Indian Oil and Mangalore Refinery and Petrochemicals among others.

India imports more than 80 per cent of its oil needs with Saudi Arabia being India’s largest supplier till December 2019, when it was replaced by Iraq. Saudi Arabia had supplied India over 21.9 million tonnes (MT) of crude oil between April to October 2017. In the same period Iraq had exported 25.8 MT of oil to India. Iran, the third largest supplier, sold India 12.5 MT of petroleum supplies during the same period.

In-fact until the beginning of this decade, Iran had been India's second largest supplier of oil, however sanctions by western nations had hit Iran hard. For the next few years Iran was only the 7th largest exporter of oil to India. The trend reversed again around 2015-16 when the sanctions eased, leading India to import 12.7 MT from Iran.

The Gulf region supplies over 60 per cent of India's oil needs - thanks to increased supplies from Iraq and Iran in the recent years.