(Bloomberg) — Two tankers carrying liquefied petroleum gas are heading to India after crossing the Strait of Hormuz, providing some relief to acute shortages as the war in the Persian Gulf disrupts supply of the cooking fuel.
The state-owned ships were granted safe transit through the strait, Indian Foreign Ministry spokesman Randhir Jaiswal said Saturday. There remains 22 India-flagged vessels stuck in the Persian Gulf including six LPG vessels, one LNG carrier and four crude oil tankers, according to Rajesh Kumar Sinha, special secretary at the shipping ministry.
India has been suffering acute shortage of LPG, used for cooking and industrial processes and in petrochemical units to make plastics. The country is the second-largest importer of the fuel, and takes 90% of it from the Middle East. It also takes a large proportion of its crude from the Persian Gulf, and had been in talks with Iran to secure the passage of tankers through the strait.
The two ships were allowed passage through the strait — which has been all but closed for nearly two weeks — after a deal between New Delhi and Tehran, according to people familiar with the matter, who asked not to be identified due to the sensitivity of the matter. They did not provide details.
An Iranian official familiar with the matter, who declined to be named as he’s not authorized to speak to the media, said he could not confirm an agreement.
The tanker Shivalik will likely reach Mundra port on March 16 and Nanda Devi is expected to arrive a day later, Sinha said. Both are owned by Shipping Corp of India Ltd. and chartered by state-run Indian Oil Corp.
The two vessels loaded from Ras Laffan in Qatar. Both ships had signaled through their AIS systems, used by ships to transmit their whereabouts, that they’re Indian government vessels.
(Updates with official comment from second paragraph)
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