Shipping Corporation of India (SCI) will resume sailing to Iran this month after a four-year hiatus, a report said Tuesday.
SCI stopped sailing to Iran in 2012 when anti-Tehran sanctions prevented the company from obtaining insurance cover for oil and other shipments.
Following the removal of the sanctions in January, International Group of Protection and Indemnity (P&I) Clubs, which generally insures the tanker market, managed to obtain "fall-back cover" from non-US markets.
"The level of cover provided by the fall-back cover has been recently raised to 100 million euros ($111.30 million), which is fairly high and provides substantial levels of protection," B.B. Sinha, the chairman of the SCI, said on Tuesday as cited by Reuters.
SCI will this month use one of its Suezmax-sized tankers to ship an oil cargo for state-refiner Hindustan Petroleum Corp Ltd (HPCL) from Iran, he added.
"It is not yet decided ... which SCI-owned vessel is going to Iran," Sinha said.
SCI had contracts with HPCL, Bharat Petroleum Corp (BPCL) and Mangalore Refinery and Petrochemicals Ltd to ship crude from Iran, he said.
According to reports, India is set to import at least 400,000 barrels per day (bpd) of Iranian oil in the year from April 1, with refiners looking to ramp up purchases after a lasting nuclear deal between Tehran and world powers.
Tehran and the Group 5+1 (Russia, China, the US, Britain, France and Germany) on July 14, 2015 reached an agreement on Iran’s peaceful nuclear program and started implementing it on January 16.
The agreement terminated all nuclear-related sanctions imposed on Iran.