A friend of mine asked me this question today, and I didn’t remember the answer but I did remember that I had written about this subject some time ago.
I had written a post back in September 2010 comparing the sources of crude oil for India and the US. However, there has been a major development since then which is US forcing all countries to reduce trade with Iran and imposing sanctions.
The problem was that India was using USD to pay Iran and that would no longer be possible under new US rules. There were several alternatives that were discussed at the time but finally the solution that was accepted by both Iran and India was partial payment for Iran’s crude in INR. This is not a perfect solution because Iran exports a lot more to India than it imports, and there is not much use fo the INR in international trade.
This and other political factors reduced in India’s oil trade with Iran and from the third position, Iran fell to the 7th position.
I wanted to see more recent data and the WSJ had a good article on the top 7 countries that India imports oil from.
Here is a chart that is created with data from that article.
If you know of another source that has the complete list, please leave a comment, and I’ll update the post. I wasn’t able to find the source myself.
