NEW DELHI - Reliance Industries, widely believed to have stopped fuel sales to Iran, exported three cargoes to Tehran in January, trade sources said on Tuesday.
"They sent one 36,000-tonne gasoline cargo, and two 27,000-30,000 tonne gasoil cargoes for Bandar Abbas port in January," said one of the traders.
The company declined comment.
"As a corporate policy and to maintain business confidentiality, we do not comment on specific transactions," a Reliance spokesman said.
Another trader said Reliance was continuing to ship out products to Iran.
"How can they stop trade on one side. It is difficult to believe that they continue to buy significant quantity of Iranian crude and stop selling products," the trader said.
He said Reliance had exported two cargoes each of diesel and petrol to Iran in December, but in the following month, two diesel cargoes and one petrol cargo were shipped out.
Tehran has not renewed its term supply deal with Reliance, said a Middle East-based source familiar with the Islamic Republic's fuel import supply programme, but declined to provide more details.
"No, we do not have a term contract with Reliance at the moment," the source said.
The Business Standard newspaper early last month reported that Reliance had decided to stop gasoline supplies to Iran after fulfilling all contractual obligations.
The report said that decision came after eight U.S. congressmen wrote to the U.S. Export-Import Bank to suspend all financial assistance to Reliance until it agreed to halt sales to Iran.
Reliance operates a 660,000 barrels per day refinery at Jamnagar in western India and its subsidiary Reliance Petroleum Ltd commissioned a new export-focused 580,000 bpd plant adjacent to the existing refinery.
After reaching full capacity, the $6 billion new refinery and the existing plant will make the Jamnagar complex the world's single-biggest supplier of fuels to the global market, pumping out 1.24 million bpd.
03-02-2009
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