India pledged to continue cutting oil imports from Iran over time but gave no specific target or time-frame for such reductions in talks with US special envoy Carlos Pascual on Tuesday, a source familiar with the discussions said.
Pascual, who has been pressing Iran's clients to cut their imports to avoid tighter sanctions, met foreign ministry officials and discussed a waiver from the new measures, which are due to come into effect at the end of June.
"We will continue to keep discussing it (the waiver)," the source said, on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the talks.The United States wants allies to reduce oil imports from Iran substantially as it tries to pressureTehran over its nuclear programme which the West thinks aims to build atomic weapons. Tehran denies this.
India and China, Iran's biggest crude customers, have cut imports, but neither has publicly requested a waiver from Washington's unilateral measures. New Delhi has so far dismissed the call for cuts while privately pressing for reductions.
Indian refiners cut imports by a third in April from March to about 269,000 barrels per day (bpd), tanker discharge data available to Reuters shows. Volumes agreed in annual contracts effective April 1 are expected to be at least 15-20 percent down on the previous year's planned 362,000 bpd or so, according to industry sources.
Minister of state for oil RPN Singh said on Tuesday that India imported 17.44 million tonnes -- equivalent to 348,800 bpd -- of oil from Iran in 2011/12, according to provisional figures. In March, foreign secretary Ranjan Mathai said imports for the year were likely to be under 340,000 bpd.
Singh added that India aimed to import about 310,000 bpd from Iran in 2012/13, which would be a reduction of about 11 percent from last year's provisional figures.
The United States has already granted a waiver to the impending sanctions for 10 European Union countries and Japan, which reduced imports by 15-22 percent despite an earthquake and tsunami that crippled its Fukushima nuclear reactor and generated widespread distrust of nuclear power.
The two sides on Tuesday also discussed India's significant imports of fertiliser from Iran, but no firm decisions were made, the source said.
Source:timesofindia.indiatimes
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