India's Bharat Petroleum Corporation (BPCL) aims to buy more oil from Saudi Arabia and other countries in 2011/12 to feed its expanded capacity and hedge against supply worries due to unrest in Libya and a payments dispute with Iran.

India's No 3 refiner plans to import 120,000 barrels per day (bpd) of oil from Saudi Arabia in the next fiscal year beginning April versus an estimated 80,000 bpd this year, a source was quoted as saying in a report in our sister newspaper Gulf Daily News (GDN).

BPCL aims to process 70,000 bpd Saudi Arabia volumes at its Bina refinery in Central India and the rest at its Kochi and Mumbai plants that can together process 430,000 bpd, he said.