India says too soon to know impacts of Iran sanctions
India says it cannot yet determine the impacts of returning US sanctions on its plans to import oil from Iran.
India’s Minister Dharmendra Pradhan told reporters in Abu Dhabi that India needed to wait to see how the future course of US sanctions against Iran would pan out.
“Let’s see how things are moving. It’s too early to predict in one way. We are watching very carefully,” he was quoted as saying by Reuters.
“This kind of geopolitical (tension) affects both consuming and producing countries. We have to live with the reality of the present geopolitics.”
US President Donald Trump this past Tuesday said he would take the US out of a nuclear agreement that was signed with Iran in 2015. He also signed a presidential memorandum to re-impose what he described as the “highest level of sanctions” against Iran.
The memorandum specifies that many of the sanctions should be re-imposed in 90 days — by August 6, 2018. The most important ones – as reported by media – would be a ban on Iran over buying or acquiring US dollars.
Another set of sanctions will once again be clamped down on Iran within the next 180 days. The most important sanctions would be those concerning Iran’s oil sales and energy sector investment as well as transactions with the Central Bank of Iran (CBI).
During the last round of sanctions, India enjoyed waivers allowing limited Iranian oil imports paid for in rupees instead of US dollars.
When sanctions were loosened against Tehran, India increased imports from Iran to almost 900,000 barrels per day (bpd) in late 2016, but intake has fallen back to around 500,000 bpd this year, Reuters added.
Recent indications showed that India’s demand for Iranian crude had been rising steeply as both Indian state-owned and private refiners were reported to have been buying more due to Iran offering the country some freight discounts.
Figures released by S&P Global Platts showed that India led an increase in Asia’s purchases of oil from Iran in April when imports stood at 670,500 bpd – some 60 percent of the continent’s total purchases of 1.81 million bpd from the Islamic Republic.
Earlier reports also said that India's oil ministry had indicated that its imports of Iranian crude for the fiscal year 2018-19 would rise by more than 30 percent from the previous year.
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