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Mangalore Refinery & Petrochemical Ltd, India's largest user of Iranian crude oil, is looking forward to an early solution to the payment crisis.
According to Mr U.K. Basu, Managing Director, though Iran continues with the supplies, payments are due since the first week of April.
“We were told by the Union Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas that the problem will be resolved in April,” Mr Basu told Business Line .
On whether he was expecting the payment gateway to be in place this week, the MRPL Managing Director said: “We are told that the RBI and the Finance Ministry are working out an amicable solution. We have no idea if it will be in place this week or next week but we are expecting an early solution.”
Iran is the second largest supplier of crude oil to India (after Saudi Arabia), meeting nearly 12 per cent of the requirement.
India has imported a little over 21.2 million tonne of Iranian crude oil in 2009-10 of which nearly one third was consumed by MRPL.
Though the supplies have come down in 2010-11 due to the payment issues, MRPL continues to depend on the Iranian crude oil for bulk of its processing capacity.
Private sector Essar Oil also processes a reasonable quantity of Iranian crude.
India stopped making payments via Hamburg-based EIH bank – handling international trade for Iranian companies – earlier this month, reportedly due to disapproval of the US authorities.
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