India eager to increase Oil imports from Iran

Indian Ambassador to Tehran D.P. Srivastava dismissed the US-led sanctions on trade with Iran, and underlined New Delhi\'s enthusiasm for boosting its oil imports from the Middle-Eastern country.\"We want an increase in Iran\'s oil exports to India,\" Srivastava said in a meeting with the governor-general of Iran\'s Southern Hormozgan province Friday night. He expressed displeasure with the low amount of oil imports from Iran, and said Tehran and New Delhi enjoy $14bln worth of trade ties annually which are limited to India\'s oil imports from Iran. Srivastava also announced his country\'s intention to invest in the private sector in Hormozgan province, and said India is eager to start up three investment companies in Iran, including a company for producing gas from urea.Iran is the second largest oil supplier to India after Saudi Arabia; India imports an average 400,000 barrels per day of oil from Iran that accounts for almost 12% of country\'s total import. Iran, which sits on the world\'s second largest reserves of both oil and gas, is facing US sanctions over its civilian nuclear program. Iranian officials have dismissed US sanctions as inefficient, saying that they are finding Asian partners instead. A large number of Chinese, Indian and other Asian firms have negotiated or signed up to oil and gas deals with Iran. Following US pressures on companies to stop business with Tehran, many western companies decided to do a balancing act. They tried to maintain their presence in Iran, which is rich in oil and gas, but not getting into big deals that could endanger their interests in the US. Yet, after oil giants in the West witnessed that their absence in big deals has provided Chinese, Indian and Russian companies with excellent opportunities to sign up to an increasing number of energy projects and earn billions of dollars, they started showing increasing interest to invest or expand work in Iran.