In the last 24 hours there have been two fascinating media reports about the Iran sanctions: one is a Bloomberg story saying Indian refiners will not buy any Iranian crude in November; the other is a Reuters story quoting a government official as saying New Delhi has not told refiners to stop buying Iranian crude. These two stories don’t just offer two different perspectives. They demonstrate exactly how confusing the situation is and how much more confusing it could become. And meanwhile, the truth remains out there. Bloomberg’s sources from several of India’s largest refiners—and biggest Iranian crude buyers—may be telling the truth or they may be saying something that the United States wants to hear. If they are telling the truth, shipping data would support this soon enough: if they stop buying Iranian crude they will have to find a replacement for those 577,000 bpd that they had […]