State-owned Indian Oil Corp (IOC) has signed its first annual deal to buy US oil, paying about $1.5 billion for 60,000 barrels a day in the year to March 2020 Reuters reported yesterday quoting the company’s chairman. IOC, India’s largest refiner, is the first Indian state refiner to buy US oil under an annual contract, in a deal that will help boost trade between New Delhi and Washington but could also threaten Nigeria’s crude exports to India, Daily Trust reports. India has for a while remained the leading destination for Nigeria’s oil, according to Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) 2018 data, and IOC has been one of the biggest Indian companies buying Nigerian crude cargoes. IOC buys some eight million tons a year of Nigerian crude, most of it from spot markets where prices are subject to extreme volatilities but in 2016 Oil Minister Dharmendra Pradhan said Nigeria had […]