The country's largest refinery, Indian Oil Corporation, is unlikely to bid for the Iraqi crude oil tendered on Thursday, as the delivery schedule and other specifications do not meet its requirements.

"Iraq's State Oil Marketing Organisation's tender to sell 8 million barrels of Basrah light crude oil this month does not fit into our scheme of things. We have already contracted crude oil supplies till August and as such would not need Iraqi crude in July," the highly placed IOC sources told PTI in New Delhi on Friday.

The SOMO had issued a tender to sell four cargoes of two million barrels each for loading from the Mina al-Bakr port between July 10 and July 31. Bids for the purchase of crude oil would close on July 7 at 1700 GMT.

The sources said that the SOMO offer was not for the recent production but for its previous storage and IOC was not interested in it.

"Till now, we used to issue tenders to buy crude and companies like SOMO participated in it. It is a reverse process of quoting in a tender by the producer company to sell. Our system is not yet prepared for that," they added.

The IOC was pitching for 3 million tonnes of BLC on term contract and not through spot/tender purchases. BLC is a favourite crude for the Indian refineries.