NEW DELHI, Mar 13: Bringing a great relief to the panicked cooking gas consumers in India, an LPG tanker sailing to India has crossed the Strait of Hormuz amid the US-Iran war, official sources said.
The vessel passed the strait on Friday afternoon without any incident. Another tanker will also sail for India soon, the sources said.
The confirmation coincided with a comment by Iran’s Ambassador to India, Mohammad Fathali, on Friday that Tehran will provide safe passage to vessels bound for India through the Strait of Hormuz, citing longstanding friendship and shared interests between the two countries.
“Yes. Because India and Iran are friends. You can see in the future and I think that after two or three hours. Because we believe that. We believe that Iran and India are friends. We have common interests; we have a common fate,” Fathali said to a question on the tanker movement.
“Suffering of the people of India is our suffering and vice versa. And for this reason, the government of India helps us, and we should help the government of India because we have a common fate and common interest,” he said.
India buys 50 per cent of its natural gas needs from the international market. Of this, it imports 20 per cent from Qatar. After Iran’s missile attacks on Qatar’s gas fields, the world’s largest natural gas exporting company, QatarEnergy, stopped production. This has affected supply of natural gas to Asian regions.
To deal with this growing challenge, India has guidelines for regulating the supply and use of natural gas in different sectors across the country. According to the new guidelines issued by the Ministry of Petroleum, the central government divided key sectors into four priority areas.
Ever since the US-Iran war began over two weeks ago, large oil tankers have remained stranded as Iran announced it would enforce a blockade of the strait. Its narrowness, at around 50 km, and shallow waters, at no more than 60 metres deep, make it vulnerable to being sealed off militarily.
(Manas Dasgupta)
