SCI to resume sailing to Iran: report

Shipping Corporation of India (SCI) will resume sailing to Iran this month, for the first time after it stopped sailing to the Persian Gulf nation four years ago, as part of its plans to expand operations and ignite growth through commodity shipments.

SCI, India's largest state-run shipping company, has ambitious goals to expand its fleet to meet expected demand growth for commodities from the nation, reports quoting its chairman said.

SCI stopped sailing to Iran in 2012 when global insurers stopped providing insurance cover to shipping lines serving Iranian ports following sanctions imposed by the Unites States and its allies targeting Iran's nuclear programme preventing shipment of oil and other commodities from and to that country.

Since the lifting of some of the Western sanctions on Iran in January this year,  International Group of Protection and Indemnity (P&I) Clubs, which generally insure the tanker market, have been able 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," Reuters quoted BB Sinha as saying in a telephone interview.

The news sent SCI shares trading on a weak Mumbai market up about 9 percent, marking the biggest percentage rise for the shipping company since September, 2015.

The Reuters report said SCI will start sailing to Iran using one of its Suezmax-sized tankers to ship an oil cargo for state-refiner Hindustan Petroleum Corp Ltd (HPCL) from Iran.

SCI has contracts with HPCL, Bharat Petroleum Corp (BPCL) and Mangalore Refinery and Petrochemicals Ltd to ship crude from Iran.

Indian refiners were importing less of Iranian oil under the sanctions regime for lack of insurance cover and since this has been restored, the refiners will start importing oil from Iran from July - after a gap of three years - its head of refineries BK Namdeo was quoted as saying.

BPCL has also planned to import an oil cargo from Iran this month, although it would use the Panama-flagged tanker "Vito".

India's Iranian oil imports are set to hit a seven-year high in the current financial year that started on 1 April, with refiners buying at least 400,000 barrels per day.

Iran currently supplies the bulk of its oil to India using its own vessels.

Some Indian refiners such as Essar Oil and Reliance Industries have already begun importing Iranian oil in tankers flagged from other countries.