India’s Reliance halts petrol sales to Iran

India’s Reliance Industries has stopped gasoline exports to Iran,to help avoid possible restrictions on sales of its fuel to the US market, press reports indicated citing an identified company official as saying the sales were halted last month. “As a corporate policy and to maintain business confidentiality, we do not comment on specific transactions,” a Reliance spokesman said. Twenty-five US senators from both parties in April proposed giving President Barack Obama new leverage in the dispute over Tehran’s nuclear ambitions: the authority to sanction companies supplying gasoline to Iran. Iran is the world’s fourth-largest oil exporter, but lacks the refining capacity to meet domestic demand and relies heavily on imports to guarantee fuel at the pumps. Reliance operates a 660,000 barrels per day (bpd) refinery at Jamnagar in western India and its subsidiary Reliance Petroleum commissioned a new export-focused 580,000 bpd plant adjacent to the existing refinery. After reaching full capacity, the 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. (June 18, 2009)