OREANDA-NEWS. June 23, 2011. Saudi Aramco will supply an additional one million barrels of oil to Indian Oil Corp for July while Indian private firm Essar Oil has requested similar volumes, trade sources with direct knowledge of the matter told Reuters on Wednesday. Essar's request has not yet been confirmed as the refiner is seeking volumes for loading in the first half of July, said two of the sources. Indian refiner MRPL bought about 600,000 barrels of extra Saudi oil for July earlier.

"There should not be any problem in confirming Essar's request. IOC's request for an extra one million barrels has been confirmed by Saudi," said one of those two sources. IOC is India's biggest refiner, controlling over 1.3 million barrels per day (bpd) of crude processing capacity. It normally buys about 110,000 bpd of oil from the Kingdom.

Essar operates a 280,000 bpd refinery at Vadinar in western Gujarat state and on average buys 500,0000-600,000 barrels Saudi crude in a month.