TEHRAN - India’s crude oil imports from Iran increased by about 30 percent to a record 768,000 barrels per day (bpd) in July, Reuters reported citing tanker arrival data.

As reported, the figures for July imports of Iranian oil were about 85 percent higher than last year’s shipments for the same period which were about 415,000 bpd.

The surge in the country’s state refiners’ intake ahead of U.S. sanctions was reported to be the main driver for this growth in the mentioned month.

State refiners accounted for about four-fifth of Iranian oil imports in July with Indian Oil Corp along with its unit Chennai Petroleum Corp getting about 300,000 bpd oil from Tehran, the preliminary data showed.

In January-July, India’s oil imports from Iran rose by more than 17 percent to about 612,000 bpd, the data showed.

The country’s oil shipments from Iran rose by an annual 40 percent to about 677,500 bpd, in the first four months of this year.

Iran had planned to sell more than 500,000 bpd of oil to India in 2018/19, Oil Minister Bijan Zanganeh said in February.

EF/MA