By Charles Kennedy - Jan 02, 2025
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Majid Takht Ravanchi, the deputy foreign minister of Iran, is on a visit to India to discuss a resumption of energy trade between the two countries.
Bilateral trade between Iran and India has plunged since 2019 as Indian refiners pulled out of purchases of Iranian oil for fear of secondary U.S. sanctions.
Now Majid Takht-Ravanchi, Iran’s deputy foreign minister for political affairs, is heading the Iranian delegation for high-level talks in India on January 2 and 3, India’s Hindustan Times reports.
Bilateral India-Iran trade plunged from a high of $17 billion in the 2018-2019 fiscal year to just $2.3 billion in 2022-2023, per Hindustan Times’s data.
It has been “unfortunate” that the Iran-India trade has plummeted since 2018, Hindustan Times quoted an anonymous senior Iranian official as saying ahead of the talks in New Delhi.
Iran “understands India’s constraints in respecting the sanctions,” the Iranian official said.
“We need to think how to deal with this issue… We need to see how to work out problems,” the official added.
Until Donald Trump re-imposed sanctions on Iran’s oil exports in 2018, Iran was a major supplier of oil to India, the world’s third-largest crude oil importer. India, which imports about 85% of the oil it consumes, has relied on cheap crude to lower its oil import bill. But Indian refiners stopped importing Iranian oil in 2018 as they were unwilling to run afoul of the U.S. sanctions and come under secondary sanctions for doing business with Iran.
India has now become a large buyer of Russian crude oil, which is being sold at a discount due to the sanctions on Russia over the invasion of Ukraine.
For Iran, the biggest buyer of its crude is China, which also seeks cheaper crude and its independent refiners have so far looked unmoved by the U.S. sanctions on Iranian oil exports.
By Charles Kennedy for Oilprice.com
Majid Takht Ravanchi, the deputy foreign minister of Iran, is on a visit to India to discuss a resumption of energy trade between the two countries.
Bilateral trade between Iran and India has plunged since 2019 as Indian refiners pulled out of purchases of Iranian oil for fear of secondary U.S. sanctions.
Now Majid Takht-Ravanchi, Iran’s deputy foreign minister for political affairs, is heading the Iranian delegation for high-level talks in India on January 2 and 3, India’s Hindustan Times reports.
Bilateral India-Iran trade plunged from a high of $17 billion in the 2018-2019 fiscal year to just $2.3 billion in 2022-2023, per Hindustan Times’s data.
It has been “unfortunate” that the Iran-India trade has plummeted since 2018, Hindustan Times quoted an anonymous senior Iranian official as saying ahead of the talks in New Delhi.
Iran “understands India’s constraints in respecting the sanctions,” the Iranian official said.
“We need to think how to deal with this issue… We need to see how to work out problems,” the official added.
Until Donald Trump re-imposed sanctions on Iran’s oil exports in 2018, Iran was a major supplier of oil to India, the world’s third-largest crude oil importer. India, which imports about 85% of the oil it consumes, has relied on cheap crude to lower its oil import bill. But Indian refiners stopped importing Iranian oil in 2018 as they were unwilling to run afoul of the U.S. sanctions and come under secondary sanctions for doing business with Iran.
India has now become a large buyer of Russian crude oil, which is being sold at a discount due to the sanctions on Russia over the invasion of Ukraine.
For Iran, the biggest buyer of its crude is China, which also seeks cheaper crude and its independent refiners have so far looked unmoved by the U.S. sanctions on Iranian oil exports.
By Charles Kennedy for Oilprice.com
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