Indian Oil Corp. will take delivery of more than a million barrels of U.S. heavy crude in October—the first U.S. crude oil purchase by an Indian energy company, IOC’s finance chief told Reuters, and certainly not the last one. The deal includes 1.6 million barrels of Mars crude plus 400,000 barrels of Western Canadian Select, to be shipped to by PetroChina. The price, IOC’s A.K. Sharma said, was “very competitive” to Iraq’s Basra Light, and as long as it stays that way, more U.S. oil will ship to India. Heavier crude blends, Reuters notes, are a new favorite for Indian refineries, which recently underwent large-scale modifications, and they sell more cheaply than lighter blends. India joins Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, China, Thailand, and Australia as a U.S. oil importer as the Asian-Pacific nations seek to diversify their import sources. U.S. crude oil exports have been on the rise, hitting […]