India’s Foreign Secretary Vijay Gokhale on Wednesday said the country was open to buying more oil and gas from the United States, reported Reuters.
“We expressed our readiness to import more gas and more oil from United States as a way of expanding trade,” Gokhale told reporters in Singapore on the sidelines of a summit attended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. He said India expects to import about $4 billion (Rs 28,845 crore approximately) worth of oil from US this year, reported The New Indian Express.
India is among eight countries that US has allowed to temporarily import oil from Iran despite sanctions on Tehran. The sanctions came into force earlier this month. The US had earlier said that it expects all countries, including India, to reduce their Iranian oil imports to zero by November 5.
Iran is India’s third-largest oil supplier after Iraq and Saudi Arabia. It supplied 18.4 million tonnes of crude oil between April 2017 and January 2018.
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