India's imports of Iranian oil may be hit from end-August after the State Bank of India (SBI) informed refiners it will not handle payments for crude from Tehran from November onwards, the finance chief of Indian Oil Corp (IOC) said on Friday. The move by the state-controlled bank, India's biggest, comes after US President Donald Trump pulled out of an international nuclear deal with Iran last month, pledging to reimpose tough sanctions within 180 days.
"(Oil) loading will be affected from end-August under the current mechanism unless a new payment route is established," IOC's A K Sharma told Reuters in a telephone interview. Although New Delhi had cut imports from Tehran in 2017/18 due to a dispute over a giant gas field, Iran remained its third-biggest oil supplier. Iran supplied about 458,000 barrels per day (bpd), or about a tenth of India's more than 4.5 million bpd of imports, in the financial year to March 2018.
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