Bharat Petroleum, a state-owned Indian company, has expressed interest in buying U.S. crude oil originally destined for China. It appears to be eyeing several cargoes that were diverted from their course towards Chinese ports in late August, when Beijing announced plans to levy a 5% import tariff on U.S. oil.
Ramamoorthy Ramachandran, Bharat Petroleum’s Director for Refineries, told Bloomberg that his company hoped to acquire oil from Chinese buyers who had opted to resell rather than pay the 5% tariff. He did not say whether the company was in negotiations with any specific sellers, but he did respond to reports of a deal for two U.S. cargoes by saying that the purchase had not been finalized.
He also stated that Bharat Petroleum was particularly interested in acquiring Louisiana Light Sweet crude and West Texas Intermediate-Light crude. The company has never bought these grades before, he said.
According to data from the Energy Information Administration, Indian refinery operators bought 287,000 barrels per day of U.S. oil in the first five months of this year. This is more than twice the average figure of 131,000 bpd recorded for the full year of 2018.