NEW DELHI: Indian refiner Essar Oil’s annual oil import from Iran plunged to its lowest level in eight months, registering a decline of about 74 percent from October, according to tanker arrival data obtained from sources and assessed by Thomson Reuters Oil Analytics.
Essar, like other India refiners, had raised purchases from Iran after the July nuclear deal that may mean the removal of sanctions next year. Now, the private refiner is cutting back purchases to restrict overall shipments from Tehran at last fiscal year’s level. Essar shipped in about 34,500 barrels per day (bpd) oil from Iran in November, the data showed. This was a decline of about 78 percent from November 2014.
Essar received about 102,500 bpd from Iran in January-November 2015, a decline of about 18 percent from a year earlier, the data showed, as the average for the first half was dragged down by Indian refiners skipping purchases in March to meet the last fiscal year’s target of 220,000 bpd.
However, in April-November, the first seven months of this fiscal year, Essar’s import of Iranian oil rose by 13.2 percent to 124,100 bpd, the data showed. To make up for less imports from Iran, Essar has boosted imports of Latin American oil. In the first eight months of the fiscal year, running from April through November, India’s oil imports from Iran dropped by about 1 percent at 235,400 bpd.
