India's BPCL is unable to pay for crude it is buying from Iran, three oil industry sources told Reuters on Thursday, in yet another sign Asian buyers are struggling to do business with the Islamic Republic. India is Iran's second-largest crude buyer, taking about 341,000 barrels per day (bpd), or about 13 percent of Iran's 2.6 million bpd of exports in trade worth about $12 billion a year.
At around 20,000 barrels a day, Bharat Petroleum Corp (BPCL) buys only a fraction of that crude, having started a new long-term contract to buy the oil in September. To pay for the crude, BPCL applied for an account with Turkey's state-controlled Halkbank, which would allow it to use the same payment channel as other Indian refiners, but the bank turned BPCL down, the sources said. BPCL declined to comment on Thursday.