New Delhi: US secretary of state Hillary Clinton's crack of the whip vis a vis India's oil imports from sanction-hit Iran appears to have worked. Keen on making up the for the likely drop in the import of Iranian crude, India is now cozying up to United Arab Emirates (UAE), Iraq as well as Saudi Arabia to beef up its oil import. A joint task force headed by India's minister for trade and commerce Anand Sharma and other UAE officials have also been working at beefing up UAE's investment into India to the tune of half a trillion US dollars. India is also eager to up its oil import from 12 million tons last year to 14 million tons this year. The oil rich conglomeration of Arab emirates are one of the world's largest suppliers o crude oil and the UAE is also the UAE is the fourth largest supplier of oil to India. Meanwhile, a spokesperson for the US government, which seems to be overtly India's shift in the oil import policies, has said that India's oil imports from Iran had dropped by as much as 11 per cent, which equals to 15.5 million tons in this financial year alone. “In the Indian case, they've actually had a long-term policy to source more from Saudi Arabia. This has been going on for several years. So you'll see the percentage from Saudi Arabia has been growing rapidly,” US government's secretary of state for south and central Asia Robert Blake said in Washington. “A more recent important source for them is Iraq, which itself has been increasing its own production. And so that also has become quite an important source for India,” he further said. Historically Iran has been one of India's major oil supplier and the South Asian country depends on Iran for nearly 12 percent imported crude requirements.
