An Iranian official says his country continues to buy gasoline and gasoil from India, denying reports concerning a halt by an Indian company to export gasoline to Iran.
"We are importing gasoline and gas oil from India," Seyfollah Jashnsaz the managing director of state-run National Iranian Oil Company (NIOC) told reporters on Monday, adding that volumes varied from month to month, reported PressTV.
The announcement comes as a senior official at India's Reliance Industries, the largest private refiner in India, said Tuesday that the company has not sold gasoline to Iran since April.
"We are not selling gasoline to Iran. We have a destination-restriction clause in our contract to prevent sale to Iran," the official who did not want to be named, told reporters.
Earlier in January, Reliance announced it has decided to stop gasoline supplies to Iran after fulfilling all contractual obligations.
It followed a letter by eight US Congressmen to India's Export-Import Bank (Exim Bank) urging it to suspend financial assistance to Reliance until the company agrees to halt exporting gasoline to Iran.
In October, the US House Foreign Affairs Committee passed legislation that would toughen sanctions on Iran over its nuclear work.
Meanwhile, Iran's Oil Minister Masoud Mir-Kazemi unveiled earlier in November a plan to counter possible fuel sanctions against the oil-rich country.
According to the plan, the Iranian petrochemical plants, such as Imam Khomeini, Bou Ali Sina and Borzouyeh, are equipped to produce about 14 million liters of gasoline per day if they have to.
Iran, OPEC's second largest oil exporter, only produces 60 percent of its domestic gasoline demand and imports the remaining 40 percent.
Iran could defuse any embargo targeting its fuel imports by maximizing production capacities of the petrochemical plants, although the measure is not economically viable, Mir-Kazemi said.
