NEW DELHI: India’s Essar Oil, the top Indian buyer of Iranian crude, imported about 18 percent less oil from Iran in June compared with a year ago, according to tanker arrival data obtained from trade sources and ship-tracking services on the Thomson Reuters terminal. Essar shipped in about 178,100 barrels per day (bpd) of oil from Iran last month, a decline of about 5 percent from May, the data showed.
Essar’s oil imports from Iran averaged at about 154,200 bpd in the first half of 2016 compared with 99,200 bpd in the previous year, when the private refiner had to cut imports under pressure from western sanctions against Iran’s nuclear programme, the data showed. Iran’s share in overall imports by Essar Oil in the January-June period rose to about 44 percent from about 29 percent in the year-ago period.
