Iran sanctions: Indian Oil is stepping up imports of US and Saudi crude
CNNLondon CNN Business — US sanctions have forced a leading purchaser of Iranian crude exports to buy more oil from Saudi Arabia and the United States. Sanjiv Singh, head of state-run refiner Indian Oil Corporation, told CNN Business that “whatever supplies were coming from Iran, they were well distributed amongst other countries.” Iran had been the third largest supplier of crude to India, which imports huge amounts of energy to fuel its growing economy. While India had said it would only recognize sanctions imposed by the United Nations, the country’s petroleum minister said in April that it would source “additional supplies from other major oil producing countries.” A spokesperson for India’s Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas confirmed to CNN Business on Wednesday that the country has now ceased all imports of oil from Iran. F. Carter Smith/Bloomberg/Getty Images US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who is currently on a visit to India, said the sanctions were aimed at countering what he called Iran’s “terror regime.” “I think there is a shared understanding of threat and a common purpose to ensure to keep energy at the right price and deter this threat,” he told reporters in New Delhi on Wednesday. India’s foreign minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar said that Pompeo was “very receptive” to India’s concerns about global energy supplies.