Besides oil imports, US sanctions hit India plan to develop Iran natural gas field

The US sanctions have not only affected India’s oil imports from Iran, but also impacted New Delhi’s plans to develop one of Iran’s gas fields. Tehran told New Delhi in January this year that it would develop the Farzad-B Gas field on its own. It has, however, kept the door open for India to join later.

Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson Anurag Srivastava said in a briefing on Thursday, “In January 2020, we were informed that in the immediate future, Iran would develop the field on its own and would like to involve India appropriately at a later stage. This matter remains under discussion.”

He said the Farzad-B Gas field negotiations were underway in which ONGC was involved in the discovery stage. “Follow-up bilateral cooperation was however impacted by policy changes on the Iranian side,” he said.