New Delhi: Despite the looming US sanctions on Persian country of Iran, Petroleum Minister Dharmendra Pradhan on Monday said that the Indian oil companies would not stop buying oil from Iran and would continue the import in the month of November.

“We have to fulfil our own domestic requirements. Some of our companies have already nominated their quota for November,” said the Minister for Petroleum and Natural Gas, while talking about the  import of Iran’s oil by Indian companies.

“We expect the global leaders will understand our requirements,” he said on the sidelines of the ‘The Energy Forum’ in New Delhi.

The fresh comments by the minister come at a time when there is less than a month’s time for the US sanctions on Iran to start from November 4. India is very much dependent on Iran for its energy needs for crude oil imports.

Commenting on recent excise duty and fuel price cut, the minister said that these prices will not be deregulated.

Last week on October 4, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley announced a price cut of excise duty by Rs. 1.50 per litre. Apart from that, all the state-owned oil marketing companies have been mandated to reduce prices of petrol and diesel by at least Rupee 1 per liter.

Huge price rise in India has been attributed by the politicians and government officials here due to the crude fuel rise in the international market. As US has fixed sanctions on Iran, oil prices in the global market has seen a sudden rise. In India, the price rise went up from around Rupees 65 to nearly 90 rupees per litre. This in turn has affected prices of other goods due to the transportation cost involved. Apart from that, Indian rupee is experiencing in new low over the last few weeks against the value of dollar.

Congress party has claimed that the price of per litre petrol must not cross Rupees 40 after all charges, taxes and cess levied on it. It gave a detailed calculation as to how the actual cost must be and sought from the government the reduction of prices in the fuel cost but to no avail. Ever since the Modi-led government came to power at the centre, there has been a steep rise in prices.

India seems to be ignoring the warnings issued by Trump to stop buying oil from Iran and this is a good sign of expressing our stance that we don’t care for such warnings and go independently for such causes.

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