India’s government is focused on ensuring safe passage for six tankers carrying liquefied petroleum gas through the Strait of Hormuz in negotiations with Iran, according to people familiar with the matter.
The vessels are carrying a combined 270,000 tons of the cooking fuel, with the government prioritizing them over ships carrying crude oil and liquefied natural gas due to the acute shortage of LPG in the country, said the people, asking not to be named as the discussions aren’t public.
India gets about 90% of its LPG imports from the Middle East, and the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz is hitting restaurants, households and petrochemical producers who use it to make plastics. The latest diplomatic effort comes after New Delhi secured safe transit through the waterway for two tankers carrying a combined 92,000 tons of LPG, enough to meet roughly one day’s demand in the nation of more than 1.4 billion people.
The country still has 22 India-flagged vessels stuck in the Persian Gulf, Rajesh Kumar Sinha, special secretary at the shipping ministry, told reporters on Saturday. That includes the six LPG ships, four crude oil tankers and one LNG carrier, he said.
Four of the LPG ships were chartered by Bharat Petroleum Corp. Ltd. and one each by Hindustan Petroleum Corp. Ltd. and Indian Oil Corp., the people said.
India’s shipping ministry, IOC, BPCL and HPCL didn’t immediately respond to emails seeking comment.
Beyond those vessels, the Indian government is also trying to get safe passage for the crude and LNG tankers, they said, adding those ships have been chartered by companies including Petronet LNG Ltd., IOC, HPCL and Reliance Industries Ltd.
Hormuz has been effectively shut since shortly after the US and Israel attacked Iran at the end of February. India also takes a large proportion of its crude from the Middle East, but has had some of the pressure taken off by the US’s granting of a waiver allowing the country’s refiners to buy Russian oil. It’s been forced to ration supplies of LNG to industrial users after the world’s largest export plant in Qatar halted production.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi said late last week that he’d discussed the “serious situation in the region” with Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, including a way to secure the passage of the ships through Hormuz.
Several of the vessels remain stranded in the Gulf region and India proposes “to continue to remain in touch and coordinate with all concerned countries to ensure safe and unimpeded transit for them in an effort to ensure our energy security,” Randhir Jaiswal, a spokesperson for India’s foreign affairs ministry, said on Saturday.
–With assistance from Bhuma Shrivastava.
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