India's BPCL Buys US Crude

India’s state-run Bharat Petroleum Corp has bought 2 million barrels of high-sulphur Mars crude oil from the United States for delivery in September, two industry sources said on Wednesday.  The refiner last bought a Mars crude oil cargo for July delivery, one of them said, Reuters reported. The corporation could not be immediately reached for comment.  BPCL made its first purchase of US oil in July, last year after Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Washington when President Donald Trump said the United States looked forward to exporting more energy products to the world’s third-biggest oil buyer. BPCL has requested an extra 1 million barrels of oil from the National Iranian Oil Company for June, two industry sources said, amid a looming threat of stringent US sanctions. The move by BPCL indicates that refiners will try to frontload their purchases from Iran ahead of a November US deadline for reimposing sanctions on the country’s petroleum sector.