India’s Iranian oil imports ascend 36 percent in face of US bans

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.

India and Iran are finalizing details of a mechanism which will allow New Delhi to pay for Iranian oil in rupees.

The US administration 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.

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.

Officials in New Delhi say the United States has agreed to grant India a waiver from Iran sanctions so that the country would be able to maintain imports of crude oil from Iran.

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.

Indian companies can import 1.25 million tonnes a month up to March 2019, according to media reports.