Source: Mehr News Agency
The director of the International Department of the National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) announced on Friday that India has cleared all of its oil debt to Iran through Gazprombank of Russia.
Iran has received long overdue payments for its oil exports to India, Mohsen Qamsari told the Mehr News Agency.
"Different options are being worked out by the Central Bank of Iran and NIOC to arrange payments for oil exports to India," he said, adding that Iran will not use a single source for receiving payments from India.
India has been largely unable to pay Iran for oil since December, when the Reserve Bank of India halted a clearing mechanism under U.S. pressure imposed to curtail trade with Iran.
Some payments were made through the Germany-based Europaeisch-Iranische Handelsbank (EIH or European-Iranian Trade Bank), a conduit that was also blocked under U.S. pressure.
Then India paid some of its debt through some banks in Turkey and the United Arab Emirates, but India's finance minister recently said that Turkish and UAE banks cannot conduct transactions of such large sums of money for Iran and India.
India imports 400,000 barrels of Iranian crude per day, and Indian refineries have been designed to handle Iranian heavy crude.
