Mubasher: India is ready to purchase more crude oil and liquefied natural gas (LNG) from the US, Foreign Secretary Vijay Gokhale said.

“We have begun importing oil and gas from the US,” Gokhale said after a meeting between India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi and US Vice President Mike Pence on the sidelines of an Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit in Singapore.

 “It is expected to be valued about $4 billion this year and we expressed our readiness to import more oil and more gas from the United States as a way of expanding our trade” Gokhale added.

Two months before the US sanctions were re-instated on Iran’s oil exports, India said that it would consider the economics, not the politics, of importing US crude, saying that oil imports from the US should not be viewed as a replacement for Iranian crude.

India became this year a regular importer of US oil, with exports substantially rising since last May.

The US shipped 196,000 barrels per day (bpd) to India last August, from 102,000 bpd in July, but down from the a high of 261,000 bpd in June, according to the Energy Information Administration (EIA).

In addition, India aims to more than double the share of natural gas in its energy mix to 15% by 2022 and plans to build 11 LNG import terminals over the next seven years to accommodate the expected additional volumes of gas imports.