OREANDA-NEWS. March 4, 2011. State-run refiner Bharat Petroleum Corp. has made alternate arrangements for one crude oil shipment from Libya after a cargo was delayed due to civil unrest in the north African nation, a senior company executive said Thursday.

"We've had difficulty contacting the supplier [in Libya] for the last seven days. So we decided to make alternate arrangements," said the executive, who declined to be named. The shipment from Libya was to carry 1.0 million barrels of oil, scheduled for March loading and delivery, the executive said, without elaborating on what alternate arrangements have been made.

Unrest in North Africa has sent crude oil prices sharply higher in recent weeks, as markets worry that the popular uprising that has brought regime change in Tunisia and Egypt could spread eastwards to key oil suppliers, such as Saudi Arabia. The International Energy Agency Wednesday said between 850,000 and one million barrels a day of Libyan crude is currently shut in. Libya normally produces just under 2% of the world's oil.

In late morning in the U.K., the front-month April Brent contract on London's ICE futures exchange was down USD 1.05 at USD 115.30 a barrel. The front-month April contract on the New York Mercantile Exchange was down 34 cents at USD 101.89 a barrel.

Bharat Petroleum imports about 500,000 tons of oil, or 3.6 million barrels, from Libya out of its total annual crude requirement of 22 million tons a year for its two refineries in Mumbai and Kochi, according to government data.

It is unclear how much of India's overall crude supply from Libya has been affected. India imports about 80% of its crude requirements. In the fiscal year through March 2010, the south Asian nation imported 159.2 million tons of crude oil, of which about 947,000 tons was from Libya.

Bharat Petroleum has been attempting to diversify its crude supply sources to prevent major disruptions in its operations. The company's refinery in Mumbai has an installed capacity of 12 million tons a year, and its refinery at Kochi in Kerala state has a capacity of 9.5 million tons a year. It also holds 61.65% of Numaligarh Refinery Ltd., which operates a 3.0-million-ton refinery at Numaligarh in Assam state.