India Trading Gold for Iranian Oil?

According to a story being reported by DEBKAfile, India has negotiated to barter gold for oil.

“India is the first buyer of Iranian oil to agree to pay for its purchases in gold instead of the US dollar, DEBKAfile’s intelligence and Iranian sources report exclusively. Those sources expect China to follow suit. India and China take about one million barrels per day, or 40 percent of Iran’s total exports of 2.5 million bpd. Both are superpowers in terms of gold assets.

By trading in gold, New Delhi and Beijing enable Tehran to bypass the upcoming freeze on its central bank’s assets and the oil embargo which the European Union’s foreign ministers agreed to impose Monday, Jan. 23. The EU currently buys around 20 percent of Iran’s oil exports.”

Other news outlets report that potential sources were not willing to confirm or discuss the rumors thus calling the veracity of the story into question.

Securing confirmation of the rumors from Indian officials may prove difficult as such declarations could negatively impact India’s standing in the international community as sanctions continue to mount against Iran. Most recently foreign ministers from the EU agreed to impose an embargo on Iranian oil exports by calling for an immediate end to new contracts by its members and an eventual phase out of existing contracts by mid summer.

These sanctions come after EU member nations, already struggling through economic turmoil, have been forced to compensate for the loss of Libyan oil supplies. India joins China and Turkey in refusing to recognize sanctions by groups other than the United Nations Security Council.

Other stories have gained in recent popularity which speculate that recent attacks on Libya and Iraq were related to the efforts by the former leaders of those nations to move away from the US dollar and preferring gold in trade for their oil production.