Saudi Arabia offers to meet India’s long-tem oil needs
23 Feb 2012
Saudi Arabia has expressed its readiness to engage India, one of the fastest growing markets in the world, for meeting its energy requirements on a long-term basis.
The Saudi side assured affirmative consideration of India's request for larger quantities of crude oil and LPG while also agreeing to look into the issues raised by India relating to the hydrocarbon trade and investment between the two countries.
The discussions between Saudi Arabia, a leading producer of crude oil, and India, the world's fourth-largest importer of crude oil, are significant as they come at a time of heightened uncertainty in the international oil markets.
In fact, Saudi Arabia supplied 27 million metric tonnes of crude oil to India during 2010-11, making it the country's largest crude oil supplier.
India has, meanwhile, sought Saudi participation, including equity investment, in upcoming upstream and downstream projects in the petroleum sector, including ONGC Petroadditions Ltd (OPaL) at Dahej and the petrochemicals project of ONGC Mangalore Petrochemicals Ltd (OMPL) at Mangalore.
Minister of state for petroleum and natural gas RPN Singh made the offer to the Saudi side after bilateral meetings with Prince Abdul Aziz Bin Salman Bin Abdulaziz, assistant minister for petroleum affairs, Saudi Arabia.
