Congress leader and Chairman of Parliamentary Committee on External Affairs Shashi Tharoor on Wednesday said India should explore possibilities of continuing with crude oil imports from Iran.
“I don’t know what the government is thinking, but we should resist for as long as possible shutting down our [oil] pipelines from Iran,” Mr. Tharoor said on the impact of sanctions the U.S. had proposed on Iran.
The former Union Minister, responding to queries from the floor after speaking on ‘Celebrating Failure’ at Indian School of Business (ISB) here, said India ought to not only keep the imports going for as long as possible, but also explore ways to “sustain those supplies rather than giving into the U.S.”.
Iranian oil is the cheapest and easiest to get, coming at a fraction of the cost compared to from anywhere else. Shutting of the supplies could result in India paying much more and ending up buying American oil that is a “very expensive thing to do given the price and the distance it has to be shipped”.
Some resistance
“It is an intimidating set of sanctions. Many are expected to knuckle under, some are showing some resistance,” he said, pointing to how the European Union has come up with a collective position. The EU has said they would work out their own arrangements to trade with Iran despite the sanctions and in euros than in dollars, he said, adding it would be interesting to see how that works and whether India could do something similar.
Disputing the NDA government claims on jobs it has created, Mr. Tharoor said several indicators suggest negative picture of the economy. As against its promise of creating eight crore jobs in four years, the government has created only 1.18 lakh jobs. A pointer to the unemployment in the country, he said, was Maoist incidents that were reported in 165 of the 625 districts.
