India\u2019s biggest refiner is sticking to Middle Eastern oil as suppliers offer deep discounts, suggesting rival producers may have a harder time making inroads in the world\u2019s third-largest crude importer.<\/p>\n
Gulf producers such as Iraq and Saudi Arabia — which together supplied around 40% of India\u2019s oil imports in 2019 — have been offering cargoes at very attractive prices recently, said Sanjiv Singh, chairman and managing director of Indian Oil Corp.. Marketers SOMO and Aramco offered Asian buyers crude at the steepest discounts in more than a decade last month amid the price war.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you look at the discounts being offered by Middle East countries over and above the market prices, definitely these crudes become more attractive,\u201d Singh said in an interview. \u201cWhen we are buying any crude, at that particular time whatever is the best offer, we take.\u201d<\/p>\n
The aggressive pricing from Middle Eastern suppliers may make it harder for producers such as the U.S., Nigeria, Mexico and Russia to win more market share in India. All four producers sold more crude to the nation last year than they did in 2018, with American supplies almost doubling, as imports from the Persian Gulf nations fell.<\/p>\n
They\u2019ll also be competing for a share of a much smaller pie, with Indian oil demand expected to take until the end of 2020 to get close to a full recovery from the coronavirus.<\/p>\n
Gasoline sales are currently running at about half of last year\u2019s average, while diesel is at 60%, according to Singh. At the peak of oil demand destruction in India, consumption of gasoline and diesel fell to 30%-35% of 2019 levels, he said. The chairman of the state-owned refiner said he doesn\u2019t expect overall demand to start picking up until the quarter starting October.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
India\u2019s biggest refiner is sticking to Middle Eastern oil as suppliers offer deep discounts, suggesting rival producers may have a harder time making inroads in the world\u2019s third-largest crude importer. Gulf producers such as Iraq and Saudi Arabia — which together supplied around 40% of India\u2019s oil imports in 2019 — have been offering cargoes at very attractive prices recently, said Sanjiv Singh, chairman and managing director of Indian Oil Corp.. Marketers SOMO and Aramco offered Asian buyers crude at the steepest discounts in more than a decade last month amid the price war. \u201cWhen you look at the discounts […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[133],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-353721","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-oil-gas"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353721","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/39"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=353721"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353721\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=353721"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=353721"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/infralive.com\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=353721"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}