India on Tuesday said it is “adequately prepared” to deal with the situation after the US ended waivers on Iran sanctions. The waivers had allowed India and a few other countries to buy oil from Iran.

“We are adequately prepared to deal with the impact of this decision,” said a spokesperson of the external affairs minister.

The oil ministry said India has put in place a “robust plan to ensure that there is adequate supply of crude oil to Indian oil refineries from May 2019 onwards.” “There will be additional supplies from other major oil producing countries from different parts of the world. The Indian refineries are fully prepared without any problem to meet the national demand for petrol, diesel and other petroleum products in the country,” a statement said.

The Trump administration on Monday announced the United States will not grant any more waivers from sanctions to countries such as India and China that import Iranian crude in a bid to increase pressure on Tehran to “ end the regime’s destabilizing activity threatening” in the region and outside.

“President Donald J. Trump has decided not to reissue Significant Reduction Exceptions (SREs — as the waivers are called) when they expire in early May,” the White house said in a statement. “This decision is intended to bring Iran’s oil exports to zero, denying the regime its principal source of revenue.”

India was among eight countries that were granted waivers from US sanctions in November 2018 for a period of six months to enable them to reduce their import of Iranian crude to zero in a phased manner. The others were China, Japan, South Korea, Turkey, Taiwan, Italy and Greece. Three of them have already cut their imports to zero, leaving India and four others, the five largest importers of Iranian crude.

First Published: Apr 23, 2019 12:28 IST