Reliance Industries Ltd., owner of the world's biggest refining complex, is preparing to buy oil from Iran next month after a gap of about five years, said an industry source with knowledge of talks between the two.

The conglomerate, controlled by billionaire Mukesh Ambani, stopped Iranian oil imports in 2010 because it was worried that the threat of U.S. sanctions on companies doing business with the Islamic republic would complicate its efforts to boost market share for its fuels in the United States.
Now with an end this year to the Western sanctions that had halved Iran's oil exports to about one million barrels per day (bpd), Tehran is trying to recoup lost market share and Reliance is keen to get Iranian barrels back into its crude diet.
Officials from India's biggest private refiner recently visited Iran to chalk out the details for resumption of trade ties with Tehran, the source said, and to begin with, National Iranian Oil Co (NIOC) will be supplying a million spot barrels each of condensate and crude oil to Reliance in a single cargo.
Reliance is also talking to NIOC for a term deal to buy 100,000-120,000 barrels per day (bpd) of oil, the same level it used to buy before sanctions hit its imports.

(Source: Reuters)