By Nidhi Verma<\/p>\n
NEW DELHI, Feb 2 (Reuters) – A deal between Indian Oil Corp and global trader Vitol to form an equal trading joint \u200bventure has been delayed due to differences over some clauses in \u200cthe contract, two sources familiar with the matter said.<\/p>\n
These include the volume of IOC’s crude purchases that \u200cwill come under the joint venture’s control and the timing of an exit clause for the trader, the sources said.<\/p>\n
IOC had hoped to sign the deal with Vitol at the India Energy Week conference last week as the country’s top refiner \u2060wanted to leverage the trader’s \u200cexpertise and global network to expand its footprint in international crude and fuel trading similar to majors like Exxon Mobil and \u200dShell.<\/p>\n
IOC was expecting the proposed joint venture to handle a fraction of its overall imports, sources said.<\/p>\n
Vitol wants to control 10% to 15% of IOC’s spot crude import volume, \u200bthe sources said, adding that the firms were still negotiating the volume.<\/p>\n
IOC and \u200cVitol did not respond to emails seeking comment.<\/p>\n
The joint venture, which the companies had planned to set up in Asia’s oil trading hub Singapore, will initially operate for five to seven years, a source had previously said, adding that an exit clause would be included for both partners.<\/p>\n
Vitol is asking to extend the \u2060tenure of exit clause to at least 10 \u200byears, the sources said.<\/p>\n
Globally, traders have turned \u200btheir focus to India, amid its rising fuel demand and refining capacity. Indian refiners are also widening their crude import sources, buying \u200dmore from the Middle \u2060East and South America as it cuts imports from top supplier Russia.<\/p>\n
Indian Oil, along with its subsidiary Chennai Petroleum, controls about 31% of India’s \u20605.2 million barrels per day (bpd) of refining capacity.<\/p>\n
Another state refiner Bharat Petroleum Corp (BPCL) plans to set \u200cup a trading desk in Singapore in February.<\/p>\n
(Reporting by Nidhi Verma; \u200cEditing by Florence Tan and Bernadette Baum)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Nidhi Verma NEW DELHI, Feb 2 (Reuters) – A deal between Indian Oil Corp and global trader…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":9367,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[125],"tags":[254,255,158],"class_list":{"0":"post-9366","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-vitol","8":"tag-indian-oil","9":"tag-joint-venture","10":"tag-vitol"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9366","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9366"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9366\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9367"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9366"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9366"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9366"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}