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| Iran 'could halt' India oil supplies |
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Iran has "seriously warned" India that it could halt crude supplies if New Delhi failed to pay overdue payments, the oil ministry said Sunday.
"We have seriously warned the Indian side of the possibility to halt oil exports if a solution is not found to clear its arrears," Fars news agency quoted National Iranian Oil Company managing director Ahmad Ghalebani as saying.
Iran's state-run company, however, said it was working to maintain its trade with India, which as its second largest client after China absorbs about 20 percent of its crude exports.
These warnings "do not mean supplies have been halted and we have no plans to stop exports to the Indian market," said NIOC director of international affairs Mohsen Ghamsari.
A warning was sent to indebted refineries but sending this letter doesn’t mean Iran’s oil exports to India were cut,” Ghamsari told the Oil Ministry’s news website, Shana. “We have no intention of halting our supplies to the Indian market.”
India has been struggling for six months to pay Tehran for the oil supplies, through various Asian and European banking channels -- Germany in particular -- which have been successively closed one after another.
On Friday reports cited unnamed executives at two Indian refinery companies as saying Iran's state-run company had warned them that it could stop oil supplies from August if New Delhi failed to clear its long-pending debt.
The possibility of India paying in gold for Iranian crude is one of the solutions under consideration, according to Iranian media.
Iran is the second-largest crude exporter to India after Saudi Arabia but payments have hit hurdles in recent months.
The annual trade between India and Iran stands at an estimated figure of 12 billion dollars annually, with India purchasing some 400,000 barrels of Iranian crude per day.
A Wall Street Journal report published July 1 cited two Indian refiners as saying that Iran warned it will stop oil supplies starting next month if pending bills aren’t cleared. NIOC made the warning in a letter requesting a sustainable mechanism for making payments, the WSJ reported.
(Source: Agencies)
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