Oil Secy confident of settling payment row with Iran

Oil Secretary S Sundareshan said he is "absolutely confident" that a pricing row with Iran will be settled.

The senior most bureaucrat in the oil ministry said that there will be no stoppage of crude oil supplies from Iran. He added that companies have been procuring Iranian oil by providing guarantee of payment.

He also said that he is "hopeful" of having a market-based pricing mechanism for diesel in place by the end of 2011. The two nations have so far not been able to find a solution on how New Delhi should pay for oil imports from Iran after India's central bank said last month that payments to the Middle East country could no longer be settled using a long-standing clearing house system run by regional central banks. On decontrolling diesel prices Sundereshan said it was difficult to free diesel prices at the current crude rates. he rues that fuel retailers' revenue losses is likely to be at USD 14 billion this fiscal. He added that the government was on the look-out for more crude oil supplies as demand increases.

  With inputs from Reuters