India seeks more oil from Saudi

Feb 24, 2012 |

New Delhi

Tags:

India has sought additional five million tonnes (MT) of crude oil from Saudi Arabia as its second largest oil supplier Iran faces action from US and Israel over the Islamic nation’s nuclear programme.

“We have sought five million tonnes of more crude oil from Saudi Arabia in 2012-13,” minister of state for petroleum and natural gas, Mr R. P. N. Singh said, after a meeting with Mr Abdul Aziz Bin Salman bin Abdulaziz, assistant minister for petroleum affairs, Saudi Arabia.

Mr Abdulaziz said that his country has a spare production capacity of 2.5 million barrels per day beyond the current output of 9.8 million barrels a day.

“Whatever the Indian oil markets will require, they will approach (Saudi) Aramco (Saudi Arabia's national oil company) and as long as they can work it out on a commercial basis, we as a government don’t interfere in this commercial relationship,” he added.

Saudi Arabia is the biggest supplier of crude oil to India followed by Iran, Iraq and Nigeria. India buys 27 million tonnes of crude oil per annum from Saudi Arabia while its annual import from Iran is about 17 million tonnes.

The increasing tensions between the US and Iran has made it tough for India to buy large volumes of oil from Iran. There is also a threat that supplies from Iran may get disrupted in case tensions between Iran on one side and US and Israel on the other side escalate.

India also conveyed its growing requirement of LPG (butane and propane) to Saudi Arabia considering the accelerated expansion of LPG coverage in the country’s rural areas under the Rajiv Gandhi Gramin LPG Vitran Yojana (RGGLVY). India imports nearly 2 MT of LPG from Saudi Arabia.

Other related issues such as the imposition of arbitrary cuts imposed by Saudi ARAMCO on supply of butane and propane from time to time, MRPL’s request for supply of crude oil on the basis of parent company guarantee instead of letter of credit among others were taken up with the Saudi side.

Post new comment

<form action="/comment/reply/129136" accept-charset="UTF-8" method="post" id="comment-form"> <div><div class="form-item" id="edit-name-wrapper"> <label for="edit-name">Your name: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <input type="text" maxlength="60" name="name" id="edit-name" size="30" value="Reader" class="form-text required" /> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-mail-wrapper"> <label for="edit-mail">E-Mail Address: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <input type="text" maxlength="64" name="mail" id="edit-mail" size="30" value="" class="form-text required" /> <div class="description">The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly.</div> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-comment-wrapper"> <label for="edit-comment">Comment: <span class="form-required" title="This field is required.">*</span></label> <textarea cols="60" rows="15" name="comment" id="edit-comment" class="form-textarea resizable required"></textarea> </div> <fieldset class=" collapsible collapsed"><legend>Input format</legend><div class="form-item" id="edit-format-1-wrapper"> <label class="option" for="edit-format-1"><input type="radio" id="edit-format-1" name="format" value="1" class="form-radio" /> Filtered HTML</label> <div class="description"><ul class="tips"><li>Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.</li><li>Allowed HTML tags: <a> <em> <strong> <cite> <code> <ul> <ol> <li> <dl> <dt> <dd></li><li>Lines and paragraphs break automatically.</li></ul></div> </div> <div class="form-item" id="edit-format-2-wrapper"> <label class="option" for="edit-format-2"><input type="radio" id="edit-format-2" name="format" value="2" checked="checked" class="form-radio" /> Full HTML</label> <div class="description"><ul class="tips"><li>Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.</li><li>Lines and paragraphs break automatically.</li></ul></div> </div> </fieldset> <input type="hidden" name="form_build_id" id="form-64939939da0b8c9970b3315eda1d9d17" value="form-64939939da0b8c9970b3315eda1d9d17" /> <input type="hidden" name="form_id" id="edit-comment-form" value="comment_form" /> <fieldset class="captcha"><legend>CAPTCHA</legend><div class="description">This question is for testing whether you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.</div><input type="hidden" name="captcha_sid" id="edit-captcha-sid" value="80610508" /> <input type="hidden" name="captcha_response" id="edit-captcha-response" value="NLPCaptcha" /> <div class="form-item"> <div id="nlpcaptcha_ajax_api_container"><script type="text/javascript"> var NLPOptions = {key:'c4823cf77a2526b0fba265e2af75c1b5'};</script><script type="text/javascript" src="http://call.nlpcaptcha.in/js/captcha.js" ></script></div> </div> </fieldset> <span class="btn-left"><span class="btn-right"><input type="submit" name="op" id="edit-submit" value="Save" class="form-submit" /></span></span> </div></form>