India seeks extra Iran oil amid sanctions threat: western media
Indian state refiner Bharat Petroleum Corp has requested an extra one million barrels of oil from the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) for June, Reuters quoted two industry sources.
'The move by BPCL indicates that refiners will try to frontload their purchases from Iran ahead of a November U.S. deadline for re-imposing sanctions on the country’s petroleum sector,' it added.
“At this point of time Iranian crude is attractive ... it is faring better than spot cargoes and other crudes,” said one of the sources.
Iran has agreed to very cheap shipment price for the Indian refiners in 2018/19, which is an incentive that significantly reduces the landed cost of Iranian oil compared to rival regional grades.
India is Iran’s top oil client after China and was one of the few nations that continued to trade with Tehran during the previous round of Western sanctions as New Delhi follows only the restrictions imposed by United Nations.
So far India’s oil imports and payment mechanism have not been hit by the threat of US sanctions.